Aileen
I waited outside her door the whole night and eventually fell asleep without realizing it. The sound of the door unlocking woke me up.
I looked up with sleepy eyes to see Mom walking out. I was completely awake by then. Seeing me, her face became grim, and her brow furrowed.
She tried to close the door but I yelled, “Wait, don’t close the door in my face. Please.”
As if listening to my request, she halted in her stops grabbing onto the doorknob without making any eye contact with me.
“What do you want?” she asked. “I have to go for my shift, and I’m getting late.”
“I need to talk to you,” I replied, getting up on my feet.
“Don’t tell me you waited the whole night for this?” her response was sharp.
I nodded. “Yes, I waited to talk to you because you refused to talk with him yesterday. You can’t go on with your life without hearing the truth. It’s not right.”
“Come in,” she murmured low, opening the door for me.
I went in after her. She went to stand beside the window, facing her back on me.
“Mom, I-”
“Tell me, what kind of truth you want me to hear about. And make it fast,” she interrupted. “Though, I don’t understand what else you have left to talk about after making me look like a clown unaware of everything.”
I would be lying if I said her words didn’t hurt me. They were stinging like wounds. This is the first time I’ve heard her talking this way in my whole life.
Even during the fights she had with Dad, she never once spoke this way with me, no matter how tired she was.
This shows how much serious this matter is to her. So, I’m going to be talking seriously as well.
“It must be fun for the two of you to play with someone’s feelings while keeping them in the dark. Did you never feel bad about this? Ever once?”
“Mom, I didn’t want to play with your feelings. I just-”
“Then, why did both of you hide this thing from me? What were you trying to achieve while feigning innocence all along? Did you think you could hide this forever until I caught the two of you? Is that why, you were sneaking around?”
“No! We were just looking for the right opportunity to tell you. That’s all.”
“And when is that opportunity supposed to come? Or was it ever going to come in the first place?”
“Yes, I was planning to tell you but-”
“But, you never had the courage, did you?” she turned around to look at me. Her eyes were full of rage and disappointment. “That’s why, you never uttered a word about this. How could you do this to me, Aileen? To your own mother? Maybe, I wouldn’t have minded it at all if you had come clean to me. But, the way I had to find it. It’s just hard to describe how horrible I feel.”
I clenched my palms, trying to keep myself steady.
“I understand what you are trying to say. You have all the reason to blame us. But, trust me, both of us love you very much. We never wanted to hurt you. Cause, I knew how happy you were with him. Seeing the two of you happy, at one point I wanted to back out of all this. Cause you deserve all the happiness in the world. But….. I failed to do it.”
“Why did you fail to do it?” she asked.
I raised my face to look her in the eyes. “Cause I love Dave. And he feels the same way towards me. That’s the reason, despite knowing that he’s the best for you, I couldn’t back away. I’m sorry.”
She clenched her fists, and the corner of her lips curled upwards into a frown.
“You love him? How long has this been going on for?”
“Well…. on the day of my birthday. I found out, he was my mate and he marked me. And later we confessed our feelings to each other,”
“He’s your mate and he marked you? No wonder we’ve never been intimate since our marriage. Cause in his heart, there was only you. And I failed to notice it,” she gasped, covering her mouth.
“Why am I such a fool? I always used to think he considered you his family that’s why he cared about you so much. But, none of this is the case here.”
“I’ve been in love with him even before your marriage. But, never told you about it,” I replied. “And I couldn’t accept seeing you married to him, that’s why I refused to move in with you two right away and waited for my high school to be over.”
“The only reason I was with Jack was to forget about Dave. But, when I saw him after two years, my feelings resurfaced.”
“You may be the best mom, but I couldn’t be the best daughter for you. You can resent me if you want to, I deserve that.”
“And what am I going to gain by hating you?” she asked, standing still. “The person I loved, isn’t in love with me. He loves my daughter. And she loves him as well. It’s not anyone’s fault but mine. I’m the one-third wheeling in this relationship. There’s no one to blame but me.”
“I’m not against the idea of love, but if you two were a little bit honest with me from the beginning, the pain I’m feeling would’ve been slightly lesser. Cause in my mind, I wanted the three of us to be a happy family. You would have a loving dad and mom, and the three of us would have so much fun together, going on trips and holidays and doing so many things we couldn’t before. But, that was just an idea in my mind. A hallucination that didn’t exist in reality. Everything is just over. There’s nothing left.”
“We can still be a happy family. Nothing is over yet,” a voice drew our attention.
Dave entered through the door and walked over to our side. He stood beside me and turned to Mom with his head held high.
“If everything is destroyed you can just build it anew from scratch. It’s as simple as that. Whether it’s a house or a relationship. Everything is possible as long as you want to. So, don’t say it’s over until it’s really over.”
Mom looked at him with a pitiful gaze, “So, you want me to destroy my old relationship with you and build a new one from scratch? Is it really as easy as you make it sound like? Will I really be able to forget the betrayal that you made me go through so easily? Are you kidding me?”