“I’m very serious.”
“Your mother has cancer, for Christ’s sake!”
I winced at the reminder. “Yes. But I had to ask myself what was harder to live with – the guilt that I’d feel not going to see her, or the venom that would reenter my life by allowing her back into it. By allowing you all back into it.”
He scoffed. “Such drama.”
“No, Gabriel,” I said, my use of his name cementing my coming point. He flinched. “You are not my family anymore. You stopped being my family a long time ago… if you ever really were.”
“Forgiveness is divine,” he reminded me.
“Yes, it is.” I stood up, letting all the anger and hurt and rejection flow out of me, and for the first time it was directed at one of the people who deserved it. “And what am I to forgive? Your complete and utter neglect? How you were never there so you never saw how she treated me? Her constant criticism and insults? How she tore me apart from the moment I could walk? I’m to forgive this. But not for you. I will forgive it all for me. For my sake.”
“Your mother was trying to prepare you for our world. She’s a realist!”
“She’s a bitter, cruel, conniving bitch!” I yelled back. “Cancer doesn’t erase that, Gabriel. Sickness doesn’t automatically erase people’s sins. My mother is not a realist. She’s a woman who woke up to realize her husband didn’t love her like she loved him and so she learned to play the game and play it well instead of running as far and as fast as she could from you. Because she’s mercenary and the money will always be more important than her happiness. And if she couldn’t be truly happy, by God, I wasn’t going to be either. I took the brunt of her bitterness. You unloved her, so she unloved me!” I pounded my fist against my chest as he stared up at me in horror. “I took your insults, your slaps, your betrayals! All of it meant for you!”
“Gracelyn…” he whispered.
“Grace.” I sucked in my tears and straightened my shoulders. “And I’m done wondering what I could have done to make her love me. It isn’t my fault she’s not capable of it. I know that now.” I nodded, knowing it but not quite feeling it. I could only hope that one day the words would sink into my bones. “I won’t let her hurt me again. Or her twisted little shit of a son who thought it was all right to set his mates on me because he thought rape was so damn funny.”
Gabriel stood up slowly, eyes narrowed. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying your precious little boy liked to let his drunken friends into my room when I was teenager. Luckily for me, I got away before anything truly horrific could happen.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Sebastian wouldn’t…”
“Sebastian is a male version of your wife. Believe me, he did. He learned from Danielle how to treat me, and she only encouraged him.”
He gazed at me, disbelieving. “You are saying all this happened under my roof without my knowledge?”
I sneered. “Don’t pretend to care now. It’s too bloody late.”
“I don’t know what you want from me.” He shrugged. “I thought I’d given you everything. Now I just don’t know what you want from me.”
Like always, he would play the sad martyr… another weapon of manipulation.
But it wouldn’t work. Not this time.
“I want you to go home to London.”
He stared at me as if he didn’t recognize me.
Good.
I didn’t want to be the person he knew before.
“You would really ignore this? Ignore your mother’s cancer?”
“I’m not ignoring it. I’m sad for anyone who has to fight that battle, but with her the sadness is begrudgingly given.” I strode toward the door and stopped to look back at him. “I’ll tell you what, Gabriel. If Danielle asks for me, I’ll come to see her. But just to visit. Not to stay, not to care for her… because we both know with utter certainty that she would not reciprocate the kindness. This is good-bye, Mr. Bentley.”
He looked away, the muscle twitching in his jaw, as realization poured over him that he wasn’t going to win this one. There would be no reuniting of this family so he could wave to his public and his shareholders and tell them all was right in his world, and if all was right in his world, then all was right in his business.
“She won’t ask for me,” I said. “And I thank God she won’t. Her presence in my life is a snake bite. I’m still not done sucking the venom out of me from last time. Another bite might prove fatal.”
And with that sad summation of my relationship with the woman who had once been my mother, I walked out of the hotel room, feeling heavy of heart but knowing I’d done the only thing I could live with.
CHAPTER 28
I’d love to say I went back to Shannon’s flat and kept my cool and was strong, filled with British stiff-upper-lipness.
The truth is, emotional flood that I was, I burst into tears as soon as Shannon opened the door, and spent the next ten minutes alternating between hugs from her and from Maia.
Finally I calmed down enough to tell them everything I’d said, and when I was done they both stared at me in awe.
“One day, when I’m older and I can hack it, I hope I’m brave enough to confront my mum like you did your dad,” Maia said.
Well, that just made me cry again.
“Oh dear,” Shannon said upon the return of the human watering pot in her sitting room. “I think I’d better make some tea.”