CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
I thought I would be ready for my mothers’ homecoming, but when a giant tour bus pulls up onto the property, I nearly pee my pants in panic. What the hell is going on?!
I stand out on the front porch holding Sadie’s hand. She’s jumping up and down, using my arm as leverage to go higher and higher. I look down, hoping if I focus on her, I’ll be less likely to have an accident in my pants. “Are you excited?”
“Yes, yes, yes! I’m gonna see a circus!”
I blink at her a few times. “A circus?”
She points at the big, colorful bus. “That’s a circus.”
I shake my head, mumbling under my breath. “I think you’re right about that. We’re about to see some clowns come out, too, I’ll bet.”
Sam is suddenly behind me, resting his hand on my shoulder. “What’s this all about?”
“Your guess is as good as mine.” I feel better having him there with me.
The door opens with a bang and a hiss of steam. People start piling out. The first one to exit is Amber, and she comes running straight for me. She’s wearing ridiculously high heels and almost trips in the dust before she makes it to the stairs and grabs the railing.
She looks up at me, smiling like a loon. “Holy crap, I almost bit it out there.” She climbs the stairs, clomping all the way up in her heels. She stops near the top and bends down to look right at Sadie, the little imp who’s suddenly become very un-Sadie-like. She’s trying to hide behind my legs.
“You must be Sadie.”
She peeks out. “I am Sadie. Are you a clown?”
Amber snorts. “A clown? I don’t think so.” She looks up at me. “Am I a clown?”
I can’t help but laugh. “Yes, you are.” I turn my attention to my little buddy, who’s still glued to me. “Sweetie, this is my sister Amber. We stayed in her apartment in New York, remember? I showed you pictures of her?”
“Hi, Amber,” Sadie says, coming out a bit more.
“Hello, Sadie. It’s so nice to meet you. I think I might have a present for you on that bus. Maybe you could go find it.”
Sadie looks conflicted, and I know exactly what she’s thinking: she wants that present, but she’s worried about attack clowns lying in wait.
“Is that a circus bus?” she asks.
Amber glances up at me, but I just shrug. She’s going to be a mom soon; let’s see how she handles it.
“I guess you could call the tour bus a circus bus,” she says. “It gets pretty crazy in there sometimes. Maybe your daddy can show you the inside.” She stands straight and waits for Sam to make his move.
He looks at me and shrugs, taking Sadie by the hand. They walk down the stairs together, weave their way around the groups of people who just got off the bus, and climb inside.
Amber steps up to be on the same level as me and stands at my side, staring at the bus. “Don’t freak out,” she says in softer tones.
“Why would I freak out about a tour bus in the middle of my front lawn?” I’m trying not to be mad at her. She could have called and warned me, so I know she decided at some point along the way that a sneak attack was a better idea.
“Hey . . . if Mohammed won’t come to the mountain, the mountain has to come to Mohammed.”
I look at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
She sighs and drapes her arm over my shoulders. “I know that you aren’t ready for Sam to go back to New York, and everybody’s really whipped from the tour, so I figured, why not come out here and relax for a little while before we go back? Maybe talk a little bit, work some things out . . .”
I stiffen, my entire body going rock hard. “You think that’s going to be relaxing?”
“Yes, I do.” She rubs my back vigorously. “You just need to let go a little bit.”
I step away to release myself from her hold. “Let go of what?”
“Let go of your bitterness. Jesus.” She frowns at me. “Are you wound tight, or what?”
I ignore the fact that she just bought me more time with Sam and Sadie and focus on the part of the story that’s giving me an ulcer just thinking about it. “You say that as if this is just a decision I need to make, like, presto bango, I’m no longer uncomfortable about the idea of spending time with . . . certain people.”
“It is a decision. And it’s an easy one; all you have to do is bother to get to know them just the tiniest bit.” She shrugs and looks out at the bus. “But hey . . . maybe you’re too afraid to do that. Maybe it’s easier for you to be angry and offended over things that didn’t happen than to face that fear.”
I feel like slapping her. “I’m not afraid. I’m not afraid of them, and I’m not afraid of you. I know all I need to know about those men, and you’re not going to bully me into doing anything I don’t want to.”
“I’m not a bully.” She grits her teeth.
I fold my arms. “That’s funny, because you’re doing a great imitation of one right now.”
She stares at me with her nostrils flaring for a few seconds, but then her face falls and tears well up in her eyes. “I’m really not a bully. I just love you so much, and I want everyone to be happy.”
I want to say nothing and let her stew in her guilt, but watching her crumble in front of me makes that impossible. “You need to let it alone,” I say, putting my arms around her.
She’s pregnant. I can’t believe I temporarily forgot that. Maybe I should try harder to keep my opinions to myself while she’s in such a delicate state. It’s just that she makes me so mad trying to force a relationship with those men on me.
She sighs and pulls out of my embrace, looking at the door of the tour bus with me as she wipes her eyes. More people are coming out. “Well, I’m afraid it might be a little too late for that.”
Guys wearing jeans and leather jackets emerge. I recognize them—even though they’re old, gray-haired, and wrinkled, with slightly updated haircuts—as the men who grace the album covers in my mothers’ living room. They’re quickly surrounded by our moms, three women who used to give a hoot about me, but who cannot be bothered to even say hello before they’re over there throwing themselves at their feet. It seems like after that overseas trip and the bus ride, they could spare a minute for the daughter they haven’t seen in almost two weeks.
“Screw this,” I growl, spinning on my heel and stomping into the house. I go straight to my bedroom and lock the door. Amber invited those turds to our home without even talking to me first, but I’m the one who still lives here. Don’t I deserve at least the respect of a phone call? What was she thinking? She knows very well that I don’t want them here. This is Amber forcing her solutions on me, as if my problems are her problems. Well, I’ve got news for her: they’re not.
And that goes for my mothers, too. They’re in on this little plan of hers. It’s all a conspiracy to pressure me into doing what they want me to do, feeling what they want me to feel. But I’m not going to do it. Not this time. I’m my own person and I’m not afraid of them. And I’m not afraid of hurting their feelings by standing my ground either.
Amber decided to set up her life with the band so she could try to foster some kind of new relationship with them, but I am not interested in that. I don’t need them in my life. I don’t need their money and I don’t need their complications. I know everybody else loves them, but I don’t, and nothing they say or do is going to change that. And if Sam joins their team and tries to get me to suck up to those guys, then he can just go back to New York and take Sadie with him.
Just thinking those words makes my heart ache, but I do my best to steel myself against the pain. I am not going to compromise this time. I have my principles, and I’m going to stand on them. If you love somebody, you do the right thing by them. These men either did not love my mothers and are therefore lying about that, or their love for my mothers was less than their love for themselves; and in that case, they aren’t my kind of people.
When our mothers walked away all those years ago, those men should’ve followed them or at least tracked them down and asked why they left without saying goodbye. They didn’t, though, and that tells me all I need to know, which is that they didn’t care about our mothers then and they don’t care about them now. They just like how our mothers worship the ground they walk on. My moms are better women than this, and it frustrates me to no end to see them acting like brainless twits.
Their old-men egos probably need that adoration to keep their hearts pumping. Amber says they regret the choices they made, and maybe that’s true, but that doesn’t undo them. Those mistakes still happened. I grew up without a father, and when I see Sam with Sadie, I realize all that I missed. It’s a tragedy is what it is—a preventable one.
I am not ready to forgive now, and maybe I never will be; but I certainly won’t be forgiving anybody who forces himself on me. Those men can’t be that clueless; they know they’ve come into my territory without my approval. So, fine. I don’t need to see them. They can live their lives and I’ll live mine. This farm is two hundred acres big, and I can easily disappear on it.
I cry until I don’t have any tears left and my eyelids are too heavy to hold open anymore. The world goes black, and that’s just perfect as far as I’m concerned.