“I told you; I’ve told you and told you,” her mother was ranting. There was really no other word for it; Cecilia had never seen her mother come so close to completely losing her composure (with outsiders sitting in the very next room with the possibility of one of them walking in at any moment to boot). “You never listen to me. You don’t belong here. You don’t belong with them. That man is ruining you. Do you see the way that he dotes on that child? Do you see how blinded from some misguided sense of parental affection he is over her? I don’t know how you stomach it day after day. Three generations of work all culminated in that barely tolerable mutt sitting in the next room just because you couldn’t manage to hang on to the self-control that you were raised to employ.”
“Is there a problem in here?” Edmund inquired in that soft, carefully even tone that she knew meant his temper was being held on a very fragile leash. It would have to be him that would walk in on her mother’s almost breakdown. “We are about ready for cake.”
“I am having a private conversation with my daughter -- not that I would expect you to fathom the concept.” Greta Murray snapped at her son-in-law (not that she had ever named the relationship out loud). Sometimes, Cecilia wondered if her mother even realized that she had never once used his name either to his face or when he was under discussion, but that was a foolish thing to wonder about. Her mother never did anything without a purpose whether it made sense to anyone else or not. “You have no manners whatsoever.”
“Mother, please.” Cecilia tried to convey a message that this was not the time with a look, but she failed (or her mother was beyond caring).
“I won’t,” she insisted. Cecilia half expected some sort of petulant foot stomping to follow what with the tone of voice the other woman was using. “I won’t let it go. I’ve let it go for years. I’ve waited and waited for your common sense to make a reappearance.” She shook her head as though chastising herself for wasting time on such a belief.
“It seems that you are incapable of making such a stride forward on your own. Well, I will not be a party to it for another minute. I will not sit here and attempt to make polite conversation with those people as if I’m pleased to be celebrating another year of that weight holding my daughter back from what she should be continuing.” She paused for the briefest of moments, and Cecilia had just enough time for a flicker of hope that the tirade would end there. Sadly, the flicker was quickly extinguished by the small snort her mother let escape before she continued. “Celebration, indeed. The day I celebrate will be the day you put that albatross in the ground.”
“Get out.” The words were so deadly calm as her husband spoke them that Cecilia thought she might have imagined them. There was, however, no mistaking the expression on Ed’s face. He looked as if her mother was very lucky that he was a man who held ideals when it came to the physical attacking of women.
“Edmund,” she tried. If he could keep his voice calm, then she could do the same. There was no reason that this whole about to blow up in her face event couldn’t be mitigated as long as everyone retained their grasp on calm (and her mother kept any further thoughts inside her head).
“I said get out,” he told the woman standing in front of him looking aghast that he was delivering orders. He didn’t even glance in Cecilia’s direction which irritated her. They were supposed to be a team. Wasn’t he always saying that? How were they supposed to be a team if he didn’t let her direct precarious conversations? He was far too emotional to be making judgment calls. “Have you gone hearing impaired on top of being mentally deficient? I want you out of my home and away from my family immediately.”
“Edmund,” she tried again. She was clearly the only currently reasonable person in the room. “You can’t kick my mother out of my home.”
“It’s my home as well as our daughter’s too. Did you not hear what she just said?” He demanded.
“You are blowing this far out of proportion, Ed.” She kept her voice calm despite the fact that her earlier flicker of irritation was rapidly growing into something that she wasn’t certain she could keep contained. Why must he always be like this? He was so difficult once he got it into his head that he had some sort of moral high ground.
“Out of proportion?” He was looking at her as if he thought he might have been hallucinating her words. Must he always make everything so dramatic? “What’s wrong with you? She just implied that she’s hoping for our child to die.”
“I think he’s making my point quite nicely, Cecilia.” Her mother was clearly unable to hold her tongue. “He doesn’t understand. He’ll never understand. He isn’t capable of it. Hasn’t he already pulled you down far enough?”
“Daddy?” Katherine would have to walk in at that precise moment. “Is it time for cake?”
“Go back to the living room, KitKat.” Edmund told the girl with all traces of his anger leaving his voice. The child, of course, would get a soothing tone while he has being all disgruntled with her for keeping a calm head on her shoulders. The precious child must be coddled, but he certainly didn’t take the trouble to do the same for Cecilia any longer. It was revolting. “Tell your Grammy about those pictures you took at the botanical gardens.”
“Why does everybody look angry?”
“Katherine! Can you not just once do what you’re told?” Cecilia’s calm facade left her. She was never going to get the situation back under control if the girl kept lingering. Edmund was never reasonable when it came to Katherine.
“Don’t yell at her.” That deadly calm tone was being directed at her now instead of her mother, and Cecilia gave up on calm completely. If everyone was going to behave like emotional wrecks, then she would just throw in the towel and join them.
“Why?” She demanded allowing the volume of her voice to increase in a manner that she would never in normal circumstances condone. “Because I should coddle her and make constant excuses for her the way that you do?”
“Don’t yell at daddy.” Of all moments to be struck by signs of her husband in Katherine, this was possibly the worst moment for it. The same glare from the same hazel eyes was being directed at her in tandem, and Cecilia had the strangest urge to break out into hysterical laughter.
“Do you see?” Her mother once again inserted herself into the conversation. “What have I told you? Every bit of her is him all over. There’s not a speck of you to be seen. Bad blood will out. It was inevitable that she would end up inferior, but you just had to play along with that man’s ideas of playing house.”
“Go find Grammy. Stay with her.” Edmund instructed.
“No,” Katherine insisted. “It’s my birthday. I want to know why everyone is yelling.” She would think that everything had to be about her, but, Cecilia conceded, she wasn’t wrong, was she? It was always about Katherine for Edmund. It had been all about Katherine for a long time, and Cecilia found herself no longer inclined to being placed in a position of being second.
“We never fought before she was born.” She stated. She was looking in her husband’s eyes and watching carefully for his response. She wasn’t certain what it was that she was looking for, but she knew she would recognize it for what it was when she saw it.
“What?”
“It’s all her, you know.” She continued her careful monitoring of his expression. “We were perfectly happy before you decided that we needed to add something to the equation. We’re all off balance, Ed. We don’t function anymore, and it’s all because of her. You can’t not know that; it doesn’t matter how fond of her you think you are.”
“Cel,” he sounded disbelieving, hurt, and betrayed all at the same time. He had no business being the last. If anyone deserved to sound betrayed, then it was her. “She’s in the room.”
“She wanted to stay.” Cecilia offered with a small shrug of her shoulders. “She should hear it. There’s no point hiding the truth
from her. You can pout, rant, and rave all you like. It doesn’t change the fact that my mother, while displaying an appalling lack of tact for the situation at hand, isn’t wrong about what that child is. She’s a disappointment and a detriment; we would have been better off if we had never had her.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Don’t tell me what I mean. You’re always doing that. You’re always acting like I should be just as enamored with her as you are. Well, I’m not. I didn’t want her. I just wanted you to have what you wanted. I shouldn’t have let you. I shouldn’t have let your poor judgment ruin us, but I did. I can’t take it back. I can’t change it. I also don’t have to stand around with a fake smile on my face pretending that I don’t know that everything is all gone wrong.”
“What is going on in here?” Edmund’s mother demanded as she came through the door. Cecilia fought the urge to roll her eyes.
“Oh look, your cavalry has arrived. Well, I’m not staying to hear a lecture on how disappointed everyone is in the truth, and you can wipe that betrayed look off of your face. If you ever bothered to use those brains that I’ve always tried to convince everyone you had, then you would feel the same way about her that I do. I’m packing. Don’t bother me while I do it.”
That had been that. Everything afterward had been conducted via lawyers. She had never seen either one of them again. She had no desire for that to ever change.
She had dropped the Vance from her name ages ago, and she would no longer concern herself with anyone who retained it. There was nothing in that file balanced on the corner of her desk to care about. There never had been.