Chapter 6 - My Mother Stopped Asking Me to Forgive
Christmas passed without us.
Thaddius stayed at our house.
I stayed with my parents.
Cordelia sent no apology.
Instead, she posted photographs from the dinner after we left.
Mom saw them because Aunt Denise showed her.
“Don’t tell Sara,” Mom said.
I was standing behind her.
“Too late.”
Mom closed the tablet.
“I don’t want you blowing up your life over us.”
“She hit me.”
“I know.”
“She humiliated you and Dad.”
“I know.”
“Thaddius knew she had been threatening Dad.”
Mom’s expression changed.
“George didn’t tell me that part.”
Dad, from the living room, muttered, “Because you’d worry.”
Mom walked into the room.
“Everybody needs to stop deciding what I’m allowed to worry about.”
It was the sharpest I had heard her speak in years.
Dad looked startled.
So did I.
Mom sat beside him.
“Sara has spent four years swallowing things because she thinks defending us embarrasses us.”
She looked at me.
“It does sometimes.”
That hurt.
“Mom—”
“Let me finish.”
Her voice softened.
“Every time Cordelia made a joke about our house, I laughed because I didn’t want you to feel caught between us. Every time Thaddius pretended not to notice, I told myself he was trying to keep peace.”
She looked down at her hands.
“I helped teach you that keeping peace mattered more than being respected.”
Dad put a hand over hers.
“We both did.”
I sat across from them.
There was no dramatic reconciliation.
We were three adults recognizing that love had not always made us brave.
Later, Thaddius came to the house alone.
Dad refused to let him inside.
I went out onto the porch.
“I brought your things.”
He held a garment bag and a box.
“Thank you.”
“Are we really doing this?”
“You told me to divorce you.”
“I didn’t mean it.”
“Why didn’t you defend me?”
He looked toward the street.
“Cordelia had been under enormous pressure.”
“From what?”
“The Marlowe project.”
“Because Dad refused the invoice?”
His eyes flicked toward me.
“You don’t understand the structure.”
“Explain it.”
He couldn’t.
Or wouldn’t.
“Sara, if you file right now, everything becomes discoverable. Every family account. Every partnership. You’ll turn an ugly dinner into a financial disaster.”
“For whom?”
He stepped closer.
“For all of us.”
I looked at the man I had married.
“Are you asking me to stay married because you love me?”
Thaddius opened his mouth.
May you like
Nothing came out fast enough.
That silence changed our marriage more than Cordelia’s slap had.
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