“We…we couldn’t afford the really close seats,” she said softly.
I lifted my eyes. “You were there?” I whispered.
“The first time we heard you play was in Minneapolis. We didn’t have the camera with us, though. You were amazing, Nolan. You just blew us away. We began watching for when your orchestra was scheduled to perform in Minneapolis again, but then you joined the one in San Francisco and they weren’t coming to Minneapolis. So we went to you.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “That must have cost you a fortune-” My words dropped off and I looked down at the pictures again. “Oh my God.”
“We knew it wasn’t the most responsible thing to do, but we knew it was the only chance we’d get to see you again. We had enough money saved up for the trips, but then some stuff started happening with the house. The furnace blew last year. Then the roof needed to be replaced. We just…we got in over our heads.”
“Why didn’t you just call me?” I asked.
“And what, Nolan? Ask you to come home? After all we’d done to drive you away? We didn’t have the right. You’d found this amazing new life – the life you always deserved. Pelican Bay was always going to be too small for you. If I hadn’t needed help with your father…”
I didn’t need her to finish the statement. I wasn’t sure how I felt about knowing they’d been forced to call me. I wanted to believe what she was saying was true – that she’d known how hard it would be for me to come back here, but I just couldn’t make it work in my mind.
“These past few weeks after Dad…after his stroke. You had a chance to try and fix things. But you couldn’t even…” My voice cracked and I had to pull in a deep breath. “You couldn’t even be bothered to treat me any better than when I’d been a kid.”
I saw my mother’s eyes fill with tears as she nodded. “Wanting to change isn’t the same thing as being able to change,” she said softly. “I know that doesn’t make it right-”
“The violin,” I interjected, not wanting to hear the rest of her statement. Maybe because I might be tempted to accept it. “You believed what the police told you about me taking that damn violin.”
“They were very convincing,” was all she said.
Pain unlike anything I’d ever known ripped through me. It felt like my entire life had been a lie.
“I need to go,” I bit out as I staggered to my feet. I was heading for the doorway to leave the kitchen when my mother called my name. I stumbled to a stop, but didn’t turn.
“The Kent boy, Dallas, he loves you.”
I wasn’t sure if she was telling me or asking me, so I just said, “He does.”
“Good,” she whispered. “Good.”
My head felt like it was going to explode. I rounded the corner, intent on going to find Dallas so we could get out of there, and nearly ran right into him. I could tell by the pained expression on his face that he’d heard everything. When he opened his arms, I walked right into them. He held onto me for several long minutes as I tried to get control of myself.
“Can we get out of here?” I croaked. I felt like I couldn’t fucking breathe.
I felt him nod, then he was taking my hand in his and leading me from the house. I didn’t spare my mother a glance as we walked past the kitchen.
I couldn’t.
I didn’t want to go home after Dallas’s doctor’s appointment, but he convinced me that we needed to spend one more night with my mother to make sure she was okay. As angry as I was at her for all the shit she’d dumped on me this morning, I knew he was right. I’d been too preoccupied with what the doctor had been explaining about the surgery he wanted to schedule for Dallas within the next week to really dwell on what my mother had said. But as we made our way back to her house, I couldn’t not think about it.
The things she’d told me about my father’s childhood and his fears made sense, and I held a certain amount of pity for both him and my mother. But I couldn’t just dismiss their ineptitude as parents completely. They’d had too many opportunities to get at least some of it right. The fact that they’d come to some of my performances was like salt in an already gaping wound. If they’d just fucking told me they were proud of me…
“Dallas,” I said softly before looking at him.
He glanced over at me from behind the wheel. He must have seen something in my eyes because a moment later, he was pulling the truck over to the curb. He held out his hand to me. The console was between us, so I couldn’t move against him the way I wanted, but the contact was enough.