“While you suffered alone.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“I’m not suffering.”
“No? Then tell me why your hands are full of calluses. Why are you wearing old clothes? Why did I see you on your knees scrubbing the floor? Why did you stop designing? Why did you stop dreaming?”
“Because I’m a wife. Because that’s what wives do.”
“No, Brenda. That is not what wives do. That’s what slaves do.”
She looked at me with fury.
“How dare you?”
“I dare because I am your mother. Because I love you. Because I won’t stand by while you destroy yourself for people who don’t deserve you. Robert loves me.”
“Robert is cheating on you.”
The silence that followed was deafening. Brenda froze, her mouth open, her eyes wide.
“What did you say?”
“Robert has a mistress. Her name is Valerie. She’s 26. He’s paying for an apartment for her in Beverly Hills.”
“Lies.”
“I have photographs.”
“I don’t want to see them.”
“Brenda—”
“No!” she screamed.
It was the first time in years I heard her raise her voice.
“I’m not going to listen to this. You’re making things up to separate me from him.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you never liked him. From the beginning, you always thought he wasn’t good enough for me.”
“I thought you weren’t good enough for him. And I was right, because you are worth a thousand times more than he will ever be able to understand.”
She collapsed onto the bed, sobbing. I waited. I let the crying come out—years of pain, of humiliation, of silence, all gushing out at once.
When she finally calmed down, I sat next to her. I put a hand on her shoulder.
“There’s more,” I said softly. “And you need to know it.”
“I don’t want to know anymore.”
“The company is bankrupt. The house is mortgaged. They have over three million dollars in debt. They are going to lose everything in less than six months.”
She slowly lifted her head.
“How do you know that?”
“I hired an investigator. He gave me all the details. I have the documents right here.”
I reached for the folder and placed it in front of her. She opened it with trembling hands. She started to read the bank statements, the foreclosure notices, the lawsuits.
“It can’t be,” she whispered. “It can’t be.”
“It’s true, honey. It’s all true.”
“But… but Robert always says the business is doing well, that we are expanding, that…”
“He lied to you. All these years, he lied to you.”
