Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 129027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129027 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 645(@200wpm)___ 516(@250wpm)___ 430(@300wpm)
And if she hadn’t been using her bodyguard to spy on me in the first place, I would have kept him. But when he reported back every time I went to Carnal, I’d get nonstop phone calls from Carol asking me what I was doing at a sex club and what that would do to her reputation.
“Oh, so you texted Drew but not your mother?” Carol cries, still in a whisper. “I’ve been having palpitations again,” she says, hand to her chest. “Do you even care how your selfishness affects me? You’d be happy if I just died, is that it? Then you’d get your inheritance even faster.”
I wilt in the chair.
She’s a narcissist. This is just classic DARVO, I try to remind myself. Deny. Attack. Reverse Victim and Offender.
She’s always needed to be the victim, even when that meant making a villain of me as a little kid. My whole childhood, I was so confused—was I actually the bad guy like she kept implying? I didn’t feel bad in my heart, but she said I was.
So my thoughts spun and spun, trying to make sense of a puzzle that had no answer. And my little brain would double-check things to make sure I’d done them perfect, just in case. Still, I’d have always ended up doing or saying the wrong thing. Being bad or selfish.
Until I was so wound up with anxiety and OCD symptoms that I sometimes had difficulty leaving my bedroom as a teenager. Which she said I did because I was trying to punish and embarrass her.
What the fuck kind of woman gaslights their kid like that?
Still I can’t help myself from playing into her script. Giving her the supply she’s so desperate for. “Of course, I don’t want you to die, Mama. I love you. I’m so sorry you’ve been having palpitations again. Have you seen Dr. Palmer about it?”
“Oh, what is he going to say? That I need to watch my diet and eat less red meat? I can barely eat as it is with the nerves and all the stress of the wedding.”
I sigh, feeling the oppressive weight of interacting with her settling into my bones. Every time, I tell myself I won’t play these ridiculous games with her. But then, every time it’s just easier to fall into her trap and become the small, small girl I used to be. “You look great, Mama.”
“Don’t lie to me,” she casts an arm dramatically to the side. “Look how bloated I am.”
She contorts in her chair to stick her stomach out, even though it means her ribs are sticking out, too. The woman looks like a scarecrow but thinks she’s fat. Again, in my head, I just keep ticking off clinical definitions. Body dysmorphia. Arrested development.
But as the daughter who’s played this game too many times, I know the words she wants to hear, so I supply them. “That’s ridiculous, Mom. You’re so skinny.”
She looks at herself in the mirror beyond me, turning to the side. “You really think so?”
My mother’s mindset is perpetually that of an insecure young girl. I know why she is the way she is. I’ve met her mother, who is also a trip.
Carol’s critical eyes turn from herself to me, and I brace. Because on days like today, all the knowledge in the world of why she is the way she is can’t save me when—
“Why are you letting yourself go like this, darling?” She frowns at me, then pinches my belly.
“Hey!” I jump, and the makeup artist yanks back from my face.
“I’m going to need you to sit still,” the make-up artist says.
“Mom,” I hiss, fury biting through my veins. “Don’t touch me.”
“Don’t touch you? I grew you in my body for nine months and gave birth to you. Forty-nine hours, I labored. The purpose of children is to bring joy to their parents. Proverbs 10:1. Instead, you bring me nothing but pain. Some days,” she sighs, “I think it would’ve been best if I’d miscarried you like I did your second brother.”
It’s stupid that her words can still hurt me. But without a doubt, the arrow lands somewhere south of my heart and north of my belly, lodging there right in my sternum, and I feel myself bleeding out on the inside.
Sad. She just makes me so sad. Like I’m nothing. Like maybe I should just fade away into the gray. Every time I see her, it makes me want to lie face down on the floor and not get up for a long, long time. Weeks. Maybe never.
“Enough,” comes Isaak’s deep voice, closer than where I last saw him. My eyes pop open, making the make-up artist jump back again with the eyeliner pen.
But Isaak’s now standing over the three of us, and he looks pissed.
“That’s enough, Mrs. Roberts. You’re never going to speak to your daughter like that again.”