The Hero + Vegas = No Regrets

Costco with my mom makes me feel twelve years old again.

“You want some gummy bears?” she asks as we pass a display of a million boxes of multicolored chewy candy.

“Urm, no, thanks.”

“Is there anything you do want?”

An honest conversation. Some kind of certainty you haven’t lied about other fundamental aspects of my childhood. The voice inside my head sounds bratty, but somewhere in the airspace over Ohio, I reverted to the kid I used to be, ready to arrive at around fourteen as soon as the airplane wheels hit the tarmac.

“Nothing I can think of,” I say. I know at some point I need to speak to my mom about how I’m feeling, but right here in the middle of Costco isn’t the time or the place.

“Well, let’s go right to the middle aisles, then.”

We’re here because Mom wants to buy holiday decorations. Because she definitely needs more of them. Our house was always decorated for the holidays, no surface or wall escaping ornaments and fake snow. We’re only a couple of weeks out, and her house looks like a winter wonderland.

I wonder if Worth decorates the brownstone. I didn’t see much of it, but the bits I saw were so pretty—so quintessentially New York—it definitely deserves a real fir, strung with multicolored lights and candy canes. Worth deserves that too, along with a magical Christmas where all his festive wishes come true. My teeth saw over my bottom lip. I know he’s hurting, and I know I’ve caused it. I just hope he doesn’t do what he promised to and wait—because I don’t know if I’ll ever be the woman he deserves. He needs a woman who can love him with her whole heart. One who trusts him. I don’t know if I’ll ever be that woman, given what my dad did.

“You take the cart,” Mom says, pushing the empty buggy toward me as she heads over to a Christmas display. “Isn’t this darling?”

I pull the cart over to where she’s standing. It’s a miniature Christmas town made up of various models with moving parts. There’s a station on one side, and a train pulling up to the station with passengers waiting on the platforms. The windows of stores either side of a snowy, old-fashioned main street are filled with Christmas presents and toys. Little figurines are scattered across the scene, some throwing snowballs, others singing carols. A pond on the other side of the railway station is full of ice-skaters moving in circles. A boy lugs a cart full of presents across a patch of grass.

It looks idyllic. If you’re an inch tall.

“I can’t wait for you to have kids. You would have loved this as a child. All three of you would.”

I snort out a laugh. “Kids? There’s no hint of that on the horizon.”noveldrama

Mom pulls her attention from the Christmas scene and regards me. “What happened to that nice man who brought you to the hospital on Thanksgiving?”

It feels like someone wrapped a cloak around my heart, but instead of providing warmth, it’s tightening around it, threatening to stop its beating. “He deserves better than me,” I mumble.

“What on earth can you mean?” she asks. “You are a wonderful woman who would make an excellent wife and mother. You’re kind and loyal and clever. A little stubborn at times, but that’s not the worst trait to have. Means you don’t give up on the good stuff.”

“The good stuff?”

“You know, all your exams and stuff. You were a great student exactly because you were a little pigheaded. You never let anything beat you.”

I used to think I knew my mom almost as well as I knew myself. Now, I’m not sure if I know her at all. First putting up with my dad having another family in the next city over, and then calling me pigheaded?

“So what happened. Did you two get in a fight?”

I can’t imagine Worth ever being in a fight with anyone. Not physical or mental. He’s far too… stable. “No, but…”

“Then what? I thought he was very handsome. You two would have the prettiest babies.”

“Mom,” I groan.

“And it was so kind of him to come with you—traveling from New York to Cincinnati on Thanksgiving? I don’t know how one of you got a plane ticket, let alone two of you.”

If she thought Worth was nice before, the fact that he chartered a private plane to get me to my father’s hospital bedside would no doubt push her over the edge. She’d march me back to New York to marry him.

“He’s very kind.”

“Then what’s the problem? Why have you got it into your head that he deserves better? Who on this earth could be better than my daughter?”

I start to push the cart away and she grabs it and holds it in place, trying to catch my eye, while I look everywhere but at her.

“Sophia Amelia! Answer your mother.”

“I don’t know, Mom. How about he deserves someone who trusts that he’s the good man he seems to be? The kind of man who wouldn’t betray his wife and kids for over twenty years. How about a woman who doesn’t have a cheating father and a mother who put up with it for decades?”

As soon as the words are out, I regret them. I know my mom was just trying to do the right thing. But knowing she lied to me all these years doesn’t feel right. “I’m sorry⁠—”

My mom puts up a finger to stop me from finishing a sentence. “Don’t apologize for having your feelings about this whole situation. I get it. I’ve had plenty of feelings over the years, believe me. And I’m sorry for lying to you.” She sighs and shakes her head. “When your kids are little, you’re telling them so many lies, another one doesn’t seem so bad.”

“What other lies?” I shriek.

“Like Santa and the Tooth Fairy. And that’s just the start. All those toys that suddenly went missing and I blamed the Borrowers. When I said you were the best volleyball player on the team and Noah was an excellent violinist. We all lie to our kids, Sophia. We lie to save their feelings and to preserve their innocence as long as humanly possible.”

“But lies always get found out,” I say.

“Exactly, but the stakes are usually a lot lower, and as long as y’all are getting presents in your stockings, parents get forgiven.”

“It’s not the same,” I say. “You can’t equate lying about Santa with lying to your kids about who their father is.”

“Really?” She turns and pulls a box from the shelf underneath the setup of the model town. “I wanted you to believe in magic for as long as possible, Sophia. I wanted you to think your father hung the moon, because I wish he did. I wanted that for all of you. For all of me. Maybe I didn’t get it right. Your father definitely didn’t get it right. But don’t give away a good man because you’ve seen the failings of another.”

She tips the box she’s holding into the cart.

“You’re going to buy the ice rink?” I ask.

She moves down the aisle slightly and pulls out another box. “I’m buying the whole darn town. I want a reason for my grandchildren to visit Cincinnati in the middle of winter.”

“Mom! You can’t buy this for nonexistent grandchildren.”

“I can do anything I want. I’m grown. My kids have flown the nest, my husband is shacked up with another woman, and finally I can do what I please. And I please to prepare for my future grandchildren.”

She makes a compelling point. I might feel betrayed by my mom, but she did what she did for the right reasons. She was trying to protect me—to do her job as a mother. I scan the shelves for the train station and pull it out of the rack. “You want this?”

“Who wouldn’t want a Christmas train station, Sophia?”

I grin twitches at the corner of my mouth and I pile the box on top of the other two.

“We’re going to need another cart,” she says. “And while we’re doing this, you’re going to tell me about Worth. That’s his name, right?”

I nod and swallow. “I get that you were trying to protect us,” I say, snaking an arm around my mom’s waist. She pulls me in for a hug.

“I just did the best I could at the time.” Her voice wobbles at the end of the sentence and I squeeze her tighter.

“Worth thinks it’s his job to protect everyone. Especially the people he loves. I don’t know if the man would be capable of telling me the truth if it meant he hurt me.”

“Have you tried talking to him? If he wants to avoid hurting you, and he knows lying to you would hurt you worst of all, then wouldn’t he tell the truth at all costs?”

I’d never thought about it like that. I can’t imagine asking anything of Worth that he wasn’t prepared to give me if he were able.

“How do I trust that he’s as good a man as I think he is?”

“Well,” she says, “you bring him around your family. You meet his family and friends. You see what they say about him, what his quirks are. And you see if it all aligns with what your heart is telling you. After that, it’s a leap of faith, Sophia. Just like most of life is.”

She makes it sound so simple, so obvious. But if I’ve learned anything over these last few weeks, it’s that nothing is simple.

We fill another cart with the rest of the model village. Mom circles back to the display to make sure we’ve got everything.

“Do we have it all?” she asks. “I’m going to be disappointed if I’ve missed something, because I’ll come back next week and this will be a fly-fishing display. Christmas Town will be sold out.”

“Let’s check.” I methodically scan the shelves to ensure we have one of everything. “Oh, there’s the tree. But that’s not on the display.”

“Let me see.”

I pull the box out and she gets her readers on to check the picture.

“This is beautiful,” she says. “And they didn’t put it out.”

I look back at the shelf. “Looks like it’s the only one left,” I say. “Maybe they didn’t see it.”

There’s genuine excitement in her eyes. “It will be the center of the entire town. Oh, sweetheart, I’m so glad you came today. It’s been a while since we went shopping together.”

“You’re right, Mom. It has been a while. And hopefully we won’t come Christmas Town shopping again anytime soon.”

“Who knows? This time next year, I might want to expand.” She’s grinning ear to ear. I don’t know if it’s because she’s decided to spend way too much money on a Christmas village, or if it’s because she’s happy to have me home.

We wheel the carts over to the cash registers. As we wait in line, Mom scoops up my hand. “Worth isn’t your father, Sophia. Don’t let the actions of one man taint your view of the world. You’ll rob yourself of the joy of living. I’m not proud of much in my life, but I have three healthy, funny kids. Now I get to find out what’s in store for me in the next chapter of my life. I’m determined to make the most of it. I want to ride a horse—I’ve never done that. I want to learn how to surf. And I’m going to date.”

I almost choke on my own tongue. Date?

“I deserve a good life, Sophia. And so do you.”

“And the cherry on the sundae is your Costco Christmas Town.”

“That too,” she says, bumping me with her hip.

“You really think you could trust a man again?”

“I think I’m not going to give up before I’ve even tried. Sounds like you didn’t give Worth a shot. Life never turns out quite how you expect, but we have to make sure we revel in the good parts.”

It’s absolutely bizarre to me that after twenty-five years of betrayal by her husband, my mom could even think about dating. She’s had a long time to process things, but she’s also never given up. Is that what I did? Gave up on Worth and me without ever giving us a chance? I let what happened with my dad erase the possibility for a future not built on lies and disaster. I never believed an alternative could be possible. But if Mom can still believe in love after all this time…

Shouldn’t I?