Read Online The Girl in the Glass by Susan Meissner - Free Book Online Page A

from my father’s remorse and kindheartedness, and now here was my mother standing in the dregs of it, asking me how I felt about what had happened between them. “I don’t know how I feel about what I said.”
    “Well, I know how I feel about it. I’m stunned that you still think, after all these years, that it’s my fault your father and I divorced. You still blame me for it. Even now, as an adult, when you know darn well what he did to me. To us.”
    I folded myself into the chair I had pulled out for her. It’s amazing, really, how powerful childhood memories are, especially those that involve your parents. You don’t realize how small your world is when you are a child. Your parents are your east and west, your sun and moon. In an instantI can summon the memory of how I felt when my parents’ marriage ended and my entire universe shifted. I looked up at her.
    “I don’t blame you for what happened to your marriage, but it wasn’t just your marriage that ended, Mom. Your divorce ended my family. You took me away from Dad, brought me here to live, and I hardly ever saw him anymore. And then Nonna died, and it was like everything that I knew had been torn away from underneath me.”
    A single tear formed in the corner of each of my mother’s eyes. One of them oozed out and slid down her cheek. “It’s not my fault your father had an affair. And it’s not my fault Nonna died and you were here when it happened instead of there. He had an affair, Meg. It wasn’t my fault.”
    “It wasn’t my fault either, but the results were the same as if it was. My family disappeared.”
    She flicked the tears away. “Why are we even talking about this? It was almost twenty years ago. Is it because I am finally dating someone? You can’t handle me dating someone?”
    I thought back to the few times my mother dated after the divorce. The first time was four or five years after the divorce. The second was another four or five years after that. Neither relationship lasted longer than five or six months. I tried to remember how I felt when I met those men. One had been a sixth-grade teacher with enormous teeth, and the other had been the choir director at church, an older man whose wife had died of cancer a few years earlier. I couldn’t remember feeling about those men what I was feeling now.
    But this much I knew. The divorce was ancient history to her, but not to me. “Look, I know you are way over the divorce. Of course you should be dating. I’m very sorry I somehow made you feel like I didn’t want you to be happy. I understand that Dad hasn’t been your husband in a lot of years and you’re beyond ready to move on. And I know you don’t love him anymore. But he’s still my dad. And I do love him.”
    She stared at me for a moment. Then she pulled out the other chair and slowly sank down into it. It was the same chair Dad had sat in.
    “Where is all this coming from? What has he told you? Why was he here?” Her voice was gentle, sad almost.
    I shrugged. “He wanted to apologize for all the years he wasn’t around. I think he feels bad about the time we didn’t have together while I was growing up. Not just because of the divorce but because he didn’t make the effort to see me as much as his stepsons’ father saw his kids. I think he’s realized he and I missed out on a lot. He wanted to apologize.”
    My mother seemed to need a second to process this. “Apologize. He came down here to apologize?”
    “Yes.”
    “So he said he was sorry, and then he left?”
    I pondered for a moment how much I wanted to tell her. I doubted she would even remember Nonna’s painting of the little girl and the statue. She would definitely remember the promised trip to Florence, though. And then it just spilled out. “He told me it’s looking good for us to go to Florence this year.”
    Her eyes grew wide. “Florence. He’s finally taking you to Florence.”
    “I said he told me it’s looking good for us to go