Suddenly the kitchen door opened when Claire and John stepped into the living room. Both of them looked just as embarrassed as Danny did, as they sat next to her on the sofa, though Claire looked as distraught as the day she left after handing me her letter.
“I’m sorry, Honey. I ju...”
“I don’t care.” I interrupted. “I really don’t. You needed answers and wanted a ‘Professional’ to lead the conversation.”
Danny saw me make air quotes around the word ‘Professional’, but refrained from voicing her disagreement. John did it for her.
“Tim, I know this looks bad, but we all really only had the best intentions!”
“You be quiet, please. You’re the reason we are in this situation in the first place.” I countered, and he recoiled in surprise like his wife did a few minutes earlier. “After you visited me on Christmas and told me what happened here, what did you tell Mom about my demands?”
He collected himself before he spoke.
“I told them that you were willing to try again, as long as she worked with Danny to make sure we all knew how we got to this point, and can make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“Uh-huh. What I actually told him,...” I explained, turning towards Claire and Danny. “ ... was that it pissed me off how Mom showed up at a worksite and put my job at risk by demanding yet another thing I do for her, while she was still unable to give me any reason for why I should even try. So, the next time she wanted to talk with me, I wanted to hear EXACTLY what happened for her to simply forget about having a third child.”
“Oh boy.” Danny sighed while Claire slumped in her seat. Only John looked from face to face, looking for an explanation.
“I wasn’t willing to try again, John. I wanted her to work with Danny, so she would realize why I had no reason to give her another chance.” I let that stand for a moment, to make sure it had the intended effect before I continued. “Of course, that’s obsolete now. If you hadn’t misunderstood, she wouldn’t have written that letter. Without the letter, I wouldn’t have allowed her into my apartment, and she would still be just Claire to me. So, there was progress.”
“So ... is there hope?” Claire was silently crying again, and yes, it got to me. But I had to be clear here.
“Look, Mom. You all don’t get to treat me like dead weight for half a decade, and then fix everything by acting like decent human beings for a week. I don’t know what it is you’re hoping to achieve here, but this is not going to go the way you apparently think it will. Let me be perfectly clear. I don’t need any of you. I might need help right now, but I don’t need your help. Since I saved their daughter’s life, the Millers have offered to hire a housekeeper for me, to take care of all the cooking and cleaning. And you saw that I can very well take care of bathroom duty myself. It might not be pleasant, but it’s possible.”
“I understand.” Claire sniffled, but I was relentless. She needed to know where she stood.
“I might acknowledge that you are my mother, but it’s gonna take a long time before I’ll see you as my mother. That is also the reason why I insisted on paying you as much as I can. It makes it easier for me to accept your help. It also gives you some form of limited independence from Aaron, so you can make up your mind about your marriage without having to worry about immediate money issues.”
“Wait. Make up her mind about Aaron!?” John asked, irritated. He was obviously not in favor of the two of them getting back together.
“I asked her this morning about the chances of the two of them reconciling, and she wasn’t certain. She needs time to think about it, and I understand that. I also told her that Aaron and Logan are dead to me, and that I want nothing to do with them ever again. But I do understand that Mom spent half her life happily married to the guy, and that Logan is her son, so I could never blame her for wanting to work on those relationships. There’s a real possibility that your whole family would still be happy if I hadn’t rattled the cage with Ava.”
“You rattled the cage!? Is that how you see it?” Danny asked in a concerned voice.
“Danny, you all were happy as long as I wasn’t around! No matter what you’re telling me now, you were! Up until her parents pressured her into fixing our relationship, and I made Ava demand the use of condoms, none of you ever saw an issue with anything that happened here. That’s not an accusation, that’s just me stating a fact. Mom needs to make up her mind. If she chooses to go back to her happy family life, with her parents, her husband, and two of her children, we can all go our separate ways and chase our own happiness.”
“But I don’t want to abandon you again!” Claire protested in tears.
“BUT!” I raised my hand to signal her to wait until I finished. “If you choose to try and possibly fix our relationship, that will cost you your husband, your first born son, and possibly your parents. You can not work on our relationship without acknowledging what they did and act accordingly.”
“Tim!” Danny called out in shock, and I looked at her annoyed.
“What, you don’t agree? Let’s look at this logically. Remember what I told you all the day after Ava’s birthday. ‘A change like that doesn’t just fall out of the fucking sky’. It took them watching me getting stabbed in an attempt to protect you, for you to finally think that I may be worth their attention. Don’t even try to deny it, Danielle!” I quickly said, seeing her opening her mouth. “You made an effort long before that, I’m not claiming you didn’t. But you know damn well that it was THAT day things started to change for them.”
“Fine. I admit you are right.” she begrudgingly mumbled.
“Thank you. Now, it was Ava who made me the laughing stock at school, but after she witnessed me getting stabbed, she’s already started to stand up to her friends, defending me and working to correct the damage she caused. But what did Logan do? When I was then trying to protect all of us from his bookie, he stole the evidence I gathered and screwed it up because he couldn’t stand seeing you care for me. Your reaction to his behavior was to reward him for it with a foursome. And where is he now? He left you as soon as he realized that he wouldn’t get any more pussy from you. His school doesn’t start for another week or so, he has no goddamn reason to move back into his dorm and leave Mom with this shit alone!”
Claire looked at me in shock, but I could see the wheels turning in her head as she went over what happened during the past seven weeks. This is exactly what I didn’t want to do. I wanted Claire to make up her own damn mind, without me having to point all this shit out to her! At this point, Danielle just pissed me off for forcing this situation. But now I had to continue to make them stop pulling shit like this.
“And where’s Aaron?” I pressed on. “He saw everything you saw, he heard everything you heard, but did he ever do anything to fix our relationship? No, instead he now blames me for taking his daughter away from him. Think about it. He resents me so much for making his daughter demand the use of condoms, he wouldn’t even tell you that I was shot and in the ICU! Why wouldn’t he want anyone to know that I was in the hospital? What would’ve happened after you heard about my hospitalization, that he could possibly have a problem with?”
I sat there looking at them, but especially at Claire, who was now visibly pale.
“I ... would’ve run to the hospital ... and Ava would’ve as well.” she whispered, barely loud enough for any of us to hear. I nodded.
“He would’ve rather let me die alone, than risk you running to me.” I confirmed in a grave voice. “Now comes the hard part. If, after everything that happened to me, and after everything I did for you all, he’s still so against me being part of this family, what do you think you’d have to do if you wanted him back?”