As soon as he finished talking, knowing that Dave wouldn’t lie to her, Tabby sank down in the chair with her head in her hands. Her mom had been a good person, and we all knew that without ever having had the honor of meeting her because of how her daughter had turned out, but she’d maybe not dealt with this situation in the correct way. We hadn’t been in her shoes, though, so you can say what you would do today, but you can’t say what you would have done if you’d been Olivia back then. Times change, tolerances and mentalities change, we’re a progressive world so everything changes, and we can’t say what we would have done in a time when we weren’t responsible for a child. But, by today’s standards, if everything we’d heard was true, then yes, she had acted incorrectly, even if she did it to protect both hers and her child’s hearts. I could see Tabby was thinking the same thing and knew I had to say something, because she looked almost tormented by it. “You weren’t in her shoes, honey.”
Even after her mom died, I hadn’t heard Tabby so void of emotions as she did when she spoke just then. “She had no right.”
“She had every right,” Burt growled. “She was your mother and the person who was responsible for your wellbeing, Tabitha. She had every right to protect you from what could have ended up hurting you, because emotional scars take longer to heal than physical ones do. Trust me, I know the truth of that very well.”
There wasn’t even a flicker of emotion from her when she looked up at him as he spoke, just blankness. “She was protecting herself.”
“That might have been part of it,” Burt conceded, “but she had a right to do that, too. Life was different back then, and if a man tells you he doesn’t want to see his kid because he can’t deal with losing you, what would you do?”
“He’s right, Tabby,” Dave murmured, rubbing her shoulder. There hadn’t been one second where he hadn’t been hyperaware of his wife’s emotions, and he was the type of man who would tear any guy into pieces if they dared to hurt his wife, so the fact that he wasn’t doing that to Burt right now spoke volumes to me.
Giving them a moment, Ellis shifted and then leaned into my side. “You ok?”
Nodding, I watched as Tabby took a deep breath and then cleared her throat. “It’ll take time for me to get my head around all of this, because it’s kind of a lot to take in. I hope that when I do, I have a better understanding of the choices she made, and that I can learn to accept them. Seeing Jose go through an abusive relationship that ended very badly, my thoughts on the choices I’d make in my mom’s shoes are very different to the ones she made,” she told him, then looked over at me sadly. “You went through hell with Larry, but it still upset you when he signed over parental rights to Liv for her sake. Right now, it doesn’t seem like Mom thought that way at all, and that’s what’s getting to me.”
“You signed over parental rights to your daughter?” Burt growled, glaring at Ellis like he was… I dunno, like he was the devil, or something.
“Fuck no, I wouldn’t sign Olivia away even if it meant losing my life,” he explained. “As much as it kills me to admit this, I’m not her biological father. That piece of shit is in prison.”
As much as I would have preferred to not have to share that part of my history just yet, I knew it would do Tabby good to move the topic of conversation away from her mom now. She needed time, and she needed support, and part of that support from me was in allowing this conversation to take place.
I sat quietly listening as Burt asked about Larry and everyone added facts and details to what he was being told, taking the time to look at him closely because I had nothing to add to the conversation. My relationship with Ellis had put what had happened with Larry into perspective, and I didn’t need to rehash it all. I just wanted time to think while they discussed it, and part of that thinking was figuring out if I looked anything like my father. The more I looked, the more I picked up on things like the depth of the similarities in the color and shape of our eyes, the shape of our noses and jaws, and the cleft in our chins – all the features that I shared with Tabby, too. Hammering on the door snapped me out of my thoughts and made us all jump. “Are you expecting anyone?”