“I can’t do that, Mom. I have no right to be there. Nothing bad is going to happen. You have to stop worrying.” Advice she’d given thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of times throughout her life. “She’s perfectly safe and well cared for. They are good people. I’m hopeful that after the dust settles, they’ll let us spend time with Kayla.”
“Spend time? Spend time?” her mom repeated, louder each time. “They do not get to decide that, Hannah. She is my granddaughter. My deceased daughter gave birth to her, and I should be raising her. I’ve lost so much already.” Her outrage turned back to sadness, and she began to sob in a near-violent manner. “I can’t handle anyone else leaving me, Hannah. It hurts so bad.”
Her heart sank. She understood the all-consuming pain of missing Kayla and Mary Anne. all too well. “I know, Mom. I know.” And there was the reason Hannah had never distanced herself from her mother even when she knew it’d be healthier for both of them. Whatever untreated mental illness her mother was suffering from, she was doing just that, suffering. Experiencing very real pain.
And it killed Hannah to witness it. Even more to know she had a part in causing it.
“Have you given any more thought to talking to someone? It helped me so much while Mary Anne was sick and right after she died. Maybe—”
“I am not crazy, Hannah.”
“I know that.” She hesitated. They’d gone this far, they might as well keep pushing. “I don’t think you’re crazy, but I do think you’re sick.”
Silence.
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she rushed on. “There are so many treatments. So many ways for you to feel better and live a happy life.”
“Live a happy life?” her mom said in an incredulous tone. “My youngest daughter died a few months ago. My grandbaby has been stolen from me. And my oldest daughter betrayed me.”
Hannah’s shoulders slumped as hope for a positive outcome to this conversation disappeared.
“How am I supposed to be happy, huh? Answer that.”
She opened her mouth to tell her mom that she wasn’t the one to ask. That professionals spent years of their life learning to balance different therapies and come up with an answer to that heavy question. But her mom beat her to it.
“You’re not welcome at home until you have my granddaughter in your arms. That’s a promise.”
What? After all, she’d done for them? Taking care of Mary Anne, helping with Kayla, traveling to Vermont, and lying to a man she liked very much? This was how her mom thanked her? Anger bubbled in her veins. “Your house isn’t my home anymore, Mom. I’ve lived on my own for years.”
“Then you can continue to be on your own because you aren’t allowed in my house until I know Kayla is away from the Bensons and safe with me. It is the only way I can be sure nothing bad will happen to her.”
As much as her mom’s words cut into her heart, Hannah couldn’t resist one last chance to bring reality to this conversation. “Mom, bad things can happen no matter how hard we try to protect the ones we love. There are no guarantees in life. Look at what happened to Ma—”
“Don’t you dare say her name to me right now,” her mother spit out. “You dishonor her memory, allowing her daughter to remain with those animals. They are disgusting, and if you can’t see that, then I don’t want to see you! I need to call our lawyer.”
The line went dead.
Mouth agape, Hannah stared at her phone.
“What the?” She put it back to her ear. Yep, her mother had hung up on her. No matter the circumstance, her mother never left in anger. Her deep-rooted fear of her loved ones dying wouldn’t allow her to walk away from an argument before a resolution had been reached.
“You don’t want ugly words to be the last thing you say to someone you love.” How many times had Hannah heard that throughout the years? Hundreds, if not more.
But she’d apparently upset her mother so badly, she’d forsaken her favorite rule.
Hannah glanced around the quiet bedroom.
No sister. No parents. No Kayla. No Bensons.
No JP.
Her mother obsessed over everyone she’d lost. That obsession ran her life, yet Hannah was the one sitting all alone in a rented house while everyone she cared about pulled away from her. She had no one to turn to, nowhere to go and nothing to do.
She dropped the phone to the bed then covered her face with her hands as the hot tears she’d been holding off for four days finally burst free. Maybe she should have stayed safely locked up in her lonely box instead of taking a risk and letting herself get close to JP. At least then, she wouldn’t have gotten a glimpse of what she was missing out on.