Noah

I couldn’t even bring myself to text or call. I had Brazen do it. Yet, here I sit, waiting for my mother to arrive. Brazen’s hand rests on my leg. He’s been worried, but he’s given me time to make my own decision on this.

“She looks like you. Did you know?” Brazen makes an attempt to distract me.

The woman who gave birth to me is late for the meeting he said she’d all but begged for, which is more than a little annoying. Still, a small piece of me hopes that everything will click into place when she arrives. She’s my mom. The six-year-old inside me feels like she’s finally getting something she’s been waiting years for.

“I probably knew at some point in my life, but it’s hard for me to picture her appearance.” I close my eyes and try to imagine her, but it’s nothing but darkness.

“Do you want me to leave you alone when she gets here?”

“We might not have to worry about that if she doesn’t show.”

“She’ll show.” He sounds so sure.

“How do you know?” I’m not sure she’ll show, and frankly, I’m not even positive I want her to. Things might be so much easier if she just left me hanging today.

The little girl of years ago fights with the abandoned adult inside me.

Do I want her to show, or do I want her to stand me up?

“Because she’s here.” He motions toward the door with the angle of his face.

“Don’t leave me, Brazen. I don’t want to be alone with her.” I quickly spill out the words as the host leads my mother to our table. I’m clutching his arm so tightly, I might even be pulling out a few of his hairs.

“I won’t go anywhere, baby. Just breathe. I’m here.”

Brazen is right. She does look like me.

I hold all the air in my lungs and count her steps as she nears.

“Noah, darling.” Her voice is formal and measured, and she makes no attempt at physical contact with me, not a hug or even a handshake. “Thank you for meeting me.”

She sits without acknowledging Brazen next to me, which makes me bristle a bit. He’s unaffected by her rudeness, and he simply sits by my side. I keep silent and wait for her to say more.

“It’s so good to see you.” She sets her purse on her lap and fidgets with the silverware, as if inspecting it.

I don’t know what I expected, but she’s not it.

“It’s good to see you, too, Catherine.” I didn’t know I was going to call her that, but it’s what came out.

She flinches, and her left eye twitches.

“I’d prefer it if you called me Mom, Noah. It’s disrespectful not to do so,” she scolds me and speaks as if I’m the six-year-old that she left behind.

Anger swarms inside me.

She can’t reprimand me, not after what she did.

The little girl inside me turns, glares at Catherine, and sidles up next to the abandoned adult—a united front.

“Respect, huh?” That’s rich. “I’m sorry, but I’m not comfortable calling a stranger Mom.” I don’t feel bad for how I feel.

Catherine looks down at the table and unfolds her napkin to put on her lap. “There’s no reason for you to be catty. I’m here to see you.” She calmly looks back up.

“There’s no reason for me to be upset, right? You’re here after abandoning me completely. You didn’t even say a real good-bye or explain that you were leaving. It’s all water under the bridge? It’s been twelve years! I have news for you. Time hasn’t been standing still while you’ve been living in wedded bliss with your husband.” The anger and hurt and resentment are unstoppable. There is over a decade’s worth of things I could never say that are spilling out.

“Wedded bliss.” She pauses, and her lip trembles. “Huh. That’s how you think things ended for me? Why would I be here if everything had worked out the way I planned?”

The waiter comes to take our order, and Catherine steels her face, placing her order without looking up from the menu.

Once the server is gone, she speaks again, “He left me. I’d given that man everything I could ever give. He’s the only man that I ever truly felt loved me back. I gave you away so that I could keep him, and like some cliché, he left me for a new convertible and a younger woman.”

She gave him everything.

She loved him.

She chose him over me.

And he left her.

It all clicks. Oh, the vicious irony.

“You’re here because he threw you away, just like you did me. So, you thought, now that he no longer wants you, we could reconnect? Is that it, Catherine?”

Brazen was right. She isn’t here to simply see me. She isn’t here to apologize or to beg my forgiveness or to try to make things right.

“I wanted to enjoy a nice lunch before we dove into anything else, but it seems like you aren’t going to let that happen. After all these years apart, I thought we could spend some time together. It’s our second chance.”

One she never would have come after if her husband hadn’t kicked her to the curb.

“A second chance? Who said I wanted one? Was my moving across the country not a big enough hint that I wanted nothing to do with you? I spent my entire childhood at an orphanage because you chose a man over your own daughter.”

“You’re being dramatic. I told you how much he meant to me.”

“You know what? When you toss that pathetic excuse at me, all I hear is, I didn’t love you enough. At least you are getting a tiny glimpse of what it was like for me to be cast aside by someone who was supposed to love me. Now, tell me what you really want.”

“Mark moved his girlfriend in, and I’ve been staying at a hotel, but that’s hardly a home. I haven’t had a job or paid bills in years, Noah. I can’t be all alone. I’m not made for that sort of life. I don’t know how to live like that anymore, especially without you. I need a place to stay. I need you.”

None of that is my fault or my problem. Maybe that makes me cold. Maybe it makes me every bit as horrible as she is. And maybe it doesn’t.

“So, you came here, hoping that I would take you in? Well, that isn’t going to happen. You never should have come here at all.”

Our food comes, and Catherine keeps her head down to her plate. Brazen’s hand, which has been steady on my leg this whole time, rubs up and down, offering silent comfort. His quiet presence has helped me to find strength during this entire fiasco. He has this way about him that is so supportive, and he allows me to handle things on my own but also lets me know he has my back. He doesn’t even need to speak for me to feel it.

I look over at him and mouth, I love you, and he returns the silent words.

I start eating my lunch while our atmosphere is bathed in awkward silence. The restaurant seems to grow louder as our company stays quiet. A boisterous woman at the table next to us cackles through bites of food. An older gentleman in the corner is red-faced and in the middle of a coughing fit. A toddler screams for dessert across the room. All of these background noises makes my anxiety worsen.

More than half of my salad is gone before Catherine speaks again, “If you aren’t going to help me, then there’s no reason for me to be in your life. I need you, Noah, and you’re just shutting me out.” She looks up at me with silent pain in her eyes.

Where was that pain on the day she went to the courthouse to give up her rights? Where was that regret when I was sitting in that orphanage, wondering what I had done to make my mom give me away?

Not allowing this does make me feel bad, but at this point, I need to look out for myself. It’s just the way it needs to be.

“You don’t need me. You need something from me. Money. A place to stay. Not a daughter, and that’s fine because I don’t want a mother, not anymore. I do have a few questions of my own that I’d like answered though.” I wouldn’t have done this today had she been more receptive, but if this is the last time I’ll see her, then I have to ask.

“So, you’re turning me away, but you’d still like something from me? Is that how it is?” She shoots me an undignified look and shakes her head before jumping up from the table and stomping her foot.

Seriously?

Brazen speaks for the first time since my mother arrived, “I’ve held my tongue, Catherine, but you need to watch what you say. Noah doesn’t owe you a thing. She didn’t have to come here at all, and to be honest, it’s probably more than someone else in her situation would have done. Do us all a favor; knock off the holier-than-thou attitude, and answer some questions. It’s the least you could do after what you put her through.”

I let out a huge sigh and wait for her reaction.

She sits back down and lowers her voice. “What do you want to know?” Once again, Catherine directs her attention to me and ignores Brazen.

“In all those years, why didn’t you come to see me?”

“You were young, and I figured coming in and out of your life would be worse than what I’d already done.”

I wait, eyebrow raised.

“Fine.” She huffs. “I couldn’t risk the truth getting out. It was what needed to happen in order to let my secret die.”

Her secret was me. She wanted the memory of me to die. She needed her husband to never know I existed. That’s what she’s saying.

“I cried for weeks after I was put into Golden Heights. I asked for you every day for months. I couldn’t understand why I was there.” At six, I didn’t comprehend any of it. I couldn’t fathom why I wasn’t with my mom anymore or how I had ended up where I was. “I want to hear you say it. I want you to tell me to my face that he was more important.”

“Life isn’t that simple, Noah. You can’t just label things away in tiny little boxes and say this is the reason for that and this. You’ll understand that as you grow up. It wasn’t all about importance. It was about what was best for everyone. I could never have been my best for you if I had to lose him. You needed more, and I couldn’t live without him.”

I squeeze Brazen’s hand in mine to keep from screaming at her. She can’t be serious. How many times had she fed herself that same line before she started to believe it? She couldn’t live without him? Grown-up or not, what she’s saying will never make any sense to me, but it’s clear that she completely stands by her reasoning, even after her husband left her.

“You’ll have to learn how to live without him now, won’t you?” The snide remark feels good, and I allow myself not to feel bad about my verbal retaliation just this once.

“Are you done, Noah? Is that it? This is history I don’t want to rehash, and it’s hardly proper table etiquette. Can we put this to bed?”

“Yeah, I’m done.” So done. I don’t need to hear anything else from her.

“And you are really not going to allow me to stay with you?”

“No, I’m sorry. My mind is set on that.”

“It’s because of him.” She sneers at Brazen. “You’d never be so selfish as to do this to me.”

“And how would you know the first thing about me? Remember, you tossed me away. You claim you were thinking about me that day, but do you know what? I don’t believe you. I think you were only thinking about yourself. So, now, it’s my turn to put myself first.”

“I was in love. What would you give up for the guy sitting next to you, huh? My decision back then wasn’t over some silly boy. I did what was best for my future, and it doesn’t look like things turned out so bad for you. So, maybe consider how things could have been different for you had I not made the choice I did. There are a lot worse things, Noah.”

All I hear is that she didn’t love me. That she chose a man over her daughter. That she’s still selfish.

She throws down her napkin, and this time, neither Brazen nor I try to stop her from leaving.

I know I won’t hear from her again, and I’m okay with it. I’m good. I found my forgiveness and closure the other night by the fire. No matter what she does from this day forward, she can’t take that away from me. Plus, I also have my silly boy to fall back on, and that’s the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. My mother chose a man over me without him even asking her to do it, but Brazen would never make decisions like that for me. He proved that the second he handed me the napkin with her number on it.