Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 96513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
“Mother.”
“Mrs. Van Pelt,” Lark said, jumping to her feet.
She glanced over at me once with wide eyes. So, she hadn’t been the one to tell her.
“Do you mind if I have a minute alone with my daughter?” my mother asked.
“No, of course not.” Lark snatched up her purse and darted to the door. “I’ll be back later. Text me if you’re let out early.”
“Will do.”
And then she was gone. The door closed behind her. It was just me and my mother.
“How did you find out?”
“The real question is, why didn’t you tell me?”
I shrugged. “I wasn’t sure that you’d care.”
My mother dropped her bag off in the chair and came to stand next to me. She looked as imposing as ever in a Chanel pantsuit. Her hair styled and makeup perfect. Everything I’d learned about how a woman was supposed to act came from her. And I felt so small and insignificant under her gaze.
Then her hand came to rest on mine, and I saw something else there.
“Of course I care, Katherine,” my mother said, emotion thick in her voice.
I remained silent. A deer ready to bolt at a single provocation. I’d never heard that sound in my mother’s voice, and I didn’t know what to expect.
“I was the first person to put you in the hospital,” she continued. “I was the one who had found you. I don’t know if you even remember. I’d come home from a luncheon, and I found you on the living room floor. You were barely breathing. I panicked. I had no idea what to do. I called 911 and rushed you to the hospital. I’d just lost my husband and my son.” She choked on the words. “I couldn’t lose you, too. I wouldn’t lose you. So, when the doctors said anorexia, I made you stay in that hospital. I didn’t think twice. I knew you might hate me for it, but if I kept you alive, then that was all that mattered. Because I didn’t know whether or not you’d live.”
Tears welled into my eyes. My mother had never told me this story. I’d known the outcome, of course. I’d known that I’d been furious at her. That I’d blamed her for so long. For being callous. But… had it actually been the opposite?
“You cared about me so much that you sent me to the hospital?” I whispered.
“Of course. It was done out of love. Even if you never saw it that way. I was terrified to lose you.”
I swallowed. Oh god. “I never… I never knew.”
“That’s my fault as well,” she said, dragging a seat closer to me and sitting down. She looked so impossibly… frail in that moment. My mother, the giant… looked frail. As if life had hit her so much harder than she’d ever let on to me. “I wanted to do right by you. But in trying to do right, all I did was push you away. And… I think that’s what Camden tried to do last night.”
I sighed. “So, Camden messaged you?”
“He did, and I’m glad that he did. He’s looking out for you, even when you don’t want him to.”
“I do wish that looking out for me didn’t always end up with me in a hospital.”
“Katherine,” she said, drawing my attention back to her, “he loves you. He cares for you. And he’s not going to ruin your life like your father.”
I winced at the words. “How do I know that?”
She gave me a perfect Celeste Van Pelt bitch, please face. “Because you do.”
And she was right. I was mad at Camden for what he’d done. But if he was half as worried as my mother had just admitted to being, as Lark had admitted to being, maybe… just maybe, he’d done the right thing. I didn’t want to be here. I didn’t think I needed to be here.
But he had.
There hadn’t been another option either.
He loved me, and in his own way, he had been taking care of me. I didn’t want to end up like my parents. I didn’t want a loveless marriage where I was doomed to be unhappy. I just wanted… Camden.
“I think I probably need to talk to him.”
My mother tapped my hand twice, and a real smile split her features. “I think you do, too.”
37
Camden
I’d stayed with Monica—my mother—all night. We’d talked and shared stories and had a lot of alcohol. By the time morning came, I was ready to deal with my father and his decades of lies. I was ready for it to be over.
She didn’t approve.
I could see it in her expression. I could see the fear still buried down in there. It didn’t matter that she had left him over thirty years ago. My father still elicited a fearful response from her. She didn’t want to see this all go up in smoke. But she only knew half of the man that I had become. She’d seen the Camden Percy who came to the bar. The one who needed an escape. Who knew that he could be nothing but himself, even in unassuming clothing. But she didn’t know the man in the boardroom. The man who had made something of himself.