29. Never Change

CHAPTER29

Never Change

Remy

The next morning, the family sat for breakfast with his dad, but not his mom, Melly pulling out all the stops, (yes, even more fantastic than The House or her biscuits and gravy). But as they lingered over coffee and mimosas that were very easy on the OJ, Remy excused himself.

He did this to find his mother.

He didn’t have to go far.

After he set his dishes in the sink, he caught Melly coming in from outside.

She took one look at him and shared, “She’s in the garden.”

Remy nodded, gave her a grin he knew was weak, she returned the same, and he headed out.

He did this only to stop dead when he saw his mother sitting among the lush greenery, large urns tumbling with flora, elegant statuary dotted around, an understated fountain tinkling.

She had a peach pashmina wrapped around her shoulders over a honey-colored turtleneck, even though the temperature was already over seventy degrees. She was holding a delicate coffee cup by the saucer, fingers of her other hand to the curve of the handle of the cup, dipping her head to take a sip.

What froze him was not only the fact Colette had to be wrapped up like that, sitting in the sun in her garden, which was a likely indication of not only her being perpetually underweight, but of her illness.

It was also the fact that the last time he’d seen his grandmother, she was in that same position, in that same garden, but it was the afternoon, it was summer, even hotter, she was still wearing a shawl because of illness (and being underweight). And she was drinking sweet tea.

If memory served, she passed peacefully in her sleep within weeks of that visit.

But she was peaceful because she’d been drugged, seeing as she, too, had died of breast cancer.

Remy’s Grandma Lucette had adored him in a sticky sweet way that never failed to make him uncomfortable.

It also never failed to rile his mother to the point of consequences for Remy when she had the opportunity to mete them.

Considering the fact Lucette lived with them until Remy was four, this had not had a positive effect on Remy’s youngest years. Guillaume then moved her to an elegant bungalow five miles away, and it hadn’t gotten better, it was just brought on for different reasons.

Nevertheless, this conditioning left him with a confusing feeling of relief when his grandmother died when he was nineteen.

He understood now, as an adult, that Lucette’s fawning love had to be a smack in the face to Colette.

Having no love from her mother, watching him get it had to hurt.

What he didn’t understand was why she took her hurt and used it to make him feel the same.

There was all of this on his mind.

And there was more.

Including the fact that moment was the first time Remy had truly faced the fact his mother was dying.

While he and his family had been there, she’d been the worst version of herself. The one he knew but his family had just met. And even though he was aware of her condition, her behavior had masked it.

In that moment, he knew the woman in the garden was dying.

His mother was dying.

And he was not feeling relief, but what he was feeling was nevertheless confusing.

Colette didn’t turn her head to look at him when she took him out of his thoughts by calling, “Was it you or Sabre who broke my bird bath?”

Melly wouldn’t share, nor would his dad, so she probably found the glass sphere in the yard, or she’d been looking out the window when he’d done it.

Remy came unstuck and moved to her.

He didn’t answer until he’d folded himself onto the thick, pear-green pad of a heavy, black wrought iron chair at her side.

It was wide-seated and comfortable for him.

She looked almost childlike perched on hers, so thin, you could fit three of her on that seat.

“It was me,” he told her.

“I assume you’ll replace it,” she remarked.

He would have started the conversation by asking after the fact she was dressed like it was chilly, going on to inquire if she was feeling all right, ending with if she needed anything before he got to the meat of their discussion.

Regrettably, his mother had a knack for conversational introductions that were supremely aggravating.

“I’ve sent an email to Lisa, she’ll take care of it,” he assured.

After, with great care, resting her china cup and saucer on the table beside her, Colette finally turned her head to Remy.

“What would you do if Wyn cheated on you?” she demanded to know, a hint of belligerence in her tone.

So they weren’t going to ease into it.

Fine.

He’d roll with that.

“I wouldn’t attempt to break her jaw with a paperweight,” he returned.

She sniffed, looked away, and murmured, “Of course not. You’re a man. Men can’t get away with that kind of thing anymore.”

Jesus Christ.

“Are you trying to upset me?” Remy asked.

She turned again to him, but before she could say anything, he spoke.

“I left the five people I love most in all this world sitting at a table together, an unusual circumstance, in order to have an important conversation with you, and you lead with giving me shit about your bird bath and saying hideous things about domestic violence?”

“So I’m not one of the people you love most in the world?” she queried.

He’d opened himself up to that one.

He skirted it.

“You chose not to have breakfast with us, and here I am.”

Her eyes flashed with irritation that he’d deftly sidestepped her first parry.

“You can’t blame me for putting my shield up,” she retorted. “Of course I’d be defensive. Your visit hasn’t exactly been loving.”

“Yes, I can blame you because you’re my mother. You should never need a shield with me. And I could say the same to you about how this visit has gone, times four, because my wife and children have endured it along with me.”

Her gaze turned hard.

But he kept at her.

“And the reason you need a shield is not because of something I did, but rather, the opposite.”

“I love your father with everything I am,” she shot back.

“Which begs the question, Mom, of why you’d hurt him.”

He took a deep breath, and when she didn’t answer, he lowered it on her.

“And me.”

She looked away.

Right…

No.

“We need to discuss this. We leave tomorrow, and as I’ve already made you aware, I’m not crazy about the idea of leaving Dad with you.” It took him a moment before he could finish what he wanted to say, but he did it. “And I deserve some answers.”

“You can’t possibly understand. Wyn worships you. You’ve always been her su…” She cut herself off from what she was about to say, fidgeted with the fringe of her pashmina, and instead said, “From the moment you met her, you became her world. She’d never do anything like that to you.”

Remy might not, until recently, have understood how highly his wife regarded him, but he’d never once worried she’d step out on him.

So what Colette said was true.

He couldn’t possibly understand.

But they both knew that was a weak excuse.

Or did they?

“Mom,” he said carefully, “I don’t condone Dad’s cheating, but it isn’t okay what you do to him, and it really was not okay what you did to me.”

She grew silent.

Remy didn’t let it go. “I’m out here because I’d like to understand.”

“I’m dying, Remy. This may be the last time you see me breathing, and this is what you want to discuss?” Her head whipped in his direction. “Really? This is the only private moment I’ve had with my only child during your visit, perhaps your final visit, and this is what you bring up?”

“This may be the last time you see me too,” he returned.

“Yes, exactly,” she spat, leaning slightly his way, a look on her face that made his insides twist, he was so familiar with it and that long-remembered terror of what it might bring. “And I’d much prefer to discuss something else.”

He kept a lock on the fact he was getting pissed, but he didn’t give in to her demands.

“Right, then let me share that for the last three years, Dad has been kicking his own ass because he thought he was the reason I tanked my marriage, when in fact that reason was you.”

She gasped, her eyes getting huge.

“Would you rather discuss that?” he pushed. “Because, like I needed to be perfect for you… No, that isn’t right. Like you needed me to be perfect for you, you needed me to be everything for you, and I lived with that so long, I absorbed it. Which meant I also needed to be perfect for Wyn. To be everything for her. And when it came clear she didn’t need me for everything, she could make her own money, she could contribute to our family, our lives, she was a success on my level, I couldn’t deal with it. I didn’t know who to be if I wasn’t taking care of her. I didn’t know how to be.”

“I will never understand why she went back to work when she didn’t have to,” Colette muttered.

Christ, she never changed.

“Damn it, Mom. Are you serious?” he bit out.

She tilted her gaze to the sky. “I cannot believe you’re being this cruel to me in my final days.”

For fuck’s sake.

Remy took a calming breath and slowly released it, before he urged, “Please, Mom, for the love of me, of Dad, of your grandchildren, your family, the legacy you’re leaving, stop the fucking drama and talk to me. I’m sitting here because I want to understand.”

Her eyes sliced to him, and she snapped, “Watch your mouth around your mother.”

Remy stared at her.

Then he sighed, sat back and gazed at an urn overflowing with some dense foliage that was green as well as purple. He had no idea what it was, but he was proud as hell that Sah could walk out and tell him.

“After your performance yesterday morning, I’ve decided I’m changing my will. I’m leaving everything to Yves,” she announced.

“Fine,” Remy replied.

“I know you think it isn’t much, but no matter how dire our straits became, Mother closely guarded the Cormier jewels. They’re worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And there are other heirlooms that do not belong to your father. Sculpture. Paintings.”

“Mom, I make a shit ton of money. I have a waiting list that’s two years long for clients to get the opportunity to access my personal designs. I employ thirty people. I have a wife who loves me enough to forgive me for doing something unforgiveable, and three smart, healthy, funny, kind, beautiful children. I’m rich. I couldn’t care less about jewels and paintings.”

“You’re an artist, and you don’t care about art?”

Remy dropped his head.

There it was.

She never changed.

This was going to be it.

This was going to be his last real conversation with his mom.

Fuck, he never should have walked out into that garden.

Then again, if he hadn’t, he would have had yesterday’s events as his final moments with his mother. This hadn’t gone well, but at least it wasn’t as bad as that.

The story of his relationship with his mom.

Since there was nothing for it, he lifted his head.

And to the urn, he used a tactic that had worked before. It hadn’t worked perfectly, but it had worked.

“I’ve spoken with Melly. I’ll be arranging to pay her an additional salary. I’ve asked her to keep a close eye and report to me not only if you ever harm Dad physically again, but if it verbally turns ugly as well. She’s agreed to do this for us. She knows I’m informing you of this, and she’s agreed to that as well. I’ll also be asking Beau and Jason to drop in and make sure Dad is safe. You had all the chances you’re going to get. The minute I hear you’ve harmed him, as I said yesterday, I’m flying out, collecting you, and you’ll spend your final days in the desert with me and Wyn. This is not negotiable.”

“You can’t kidnap me, Remy.”

No, he couldn’t.

“If you refuse to come, I’ll talk Dad into coming, and you’ll die alone.”

Silence followed that remark, so complete, he sensed she knew how serious he was about what he’d just said.

Good.

And they were done.

He stood and looked down at his mother who’d tipped her head back to look up at him, a dying woman with defiant eyes.

Her hair was perfect, as was her makeup, as was her outfit. She needed to put on about twenty pounds.

But she was beautiful.

She was eighty years old and dying, but still stunning.

For fifty-six years, she’d had an adoring husband, who was an inveterate philanderer.

But she’d traveled the world. She’d lived in the lap of luxury. She wore silks and furs as a matter of course. She had diamonds and she had pearls, and she had everything in between.

If she wanted it, it was given to her.

She also had a healthy son.

Wyn had always had exceptional, and expensive taste in clothes, even before it became her business.

Remy loved his wife and was interested in all she did, so he was aware that his mother was right then wearing approximately four thousand dollars in clothing, not including the makeup and jewelry. The latter probably tipped that scale at least another twenty K, perhaps just from her diamond watch.

She was wearing more than some people made in a year.

Colette’s husband had cheated on her, but from the moment he came into her life, she hadn’t had another care in the world that mattered.

She didn’t worry about paying a mortgage or health insurance or feeding herself or her son. She’d never held a job. And she knew about her husband’s serial infidelity, but it was her choice to stay with him.

She made that choice because of all of this.

There’d been bumps along the way that she’d handled very poorly, but that didn’t change the facts.

She was a beautiful woman who’d lived a beautiful life.

“I’m going to remember you like this,” he said quietly. “Not the empty part. Not the vicious part. Not the selfish part. Not the insensitive and heartless part. But how beautiful you are. How perfect you look sitting in this garden. That’s what I’m going to remember, Mom.”

He saw her lips quiver and then he saw her chin lift.

But she didn’t say a word.

Because she was Colette Louise Cormier Gastineau.

And she would never change.

Remy bent and kissed her cheek.

Then he turned, and not looking back, he walked away.

He saw his father in the window of the conservatory, watching them, so instead of going in the back door he headed that way.

The door of the conservatory had closed behind him before Guillaume asked, “How is she?”

As he’d attempted to do at breakfast that morning, Remy tried not to let the deep discoloration at his father’s jaw make his gut burn.

And as happened at breakfast that morning, he failed.

Which might have been why he answered, “Stubborn, dramatic and bitchy. In other words, the same as always.”

Guillaume assumed a disappointed father’s face as he admonished, “Remy.”

He knew she couldn’t hear them, so he knew it was safe to ask his next question, and this was because he was the man they raised in all the good and bad parts of how that happened.

“Have you spoken with Estelle?”

His father took a big breath and said, “Yes. And although she very much wishes to meet you, Wyn and the children, she respectfully declines to do so during this visit. She feels it should be about your mother.”

And that spoke volumes about the woman Estelle was.

“It’s her choice,” Remy conceded. “But please consider bringing her out to visit as soon as you can. Wyn and the kids want to meet her, and your grandchildren deserve to see their grandfather happy for once.”

A muscle ticked in his father’s cheek.

But he let it go and shared, “Beau and Katy phoned. They’d like us to come over for a crawfish boil and football. Wyn and the children wish to go.”

Remy nodded, relieved they all had something to look forward to. He reached and squeezed his father’s arm before he let go and made to walk away.

“Remy,” Guillaume called.

He stopped and looked at his dad.

“I won’t be going to the boil, and it’s likely your mother will also send her regrets.”

Right.

It wouldn’t do for anyone to see that huge bruise on his face or have the woman who gave it to him hanging around, making faces as people scarfed down crawfish, shrimp and potatoes, and gnawed on corn over a newspaper-strewn picnic table before they shoved Katy’s famous bread pudding down their throats.

Remy wondered how many times his mother and father sent regrets for the same reason. He then decided not to think about it. If his ploy with his mother worked, that particular part of their lives was done.

“We won’t stay long,” Remy assured.

Guillaume nodded, and Remy was again about to leave in order to look for Wyn when his dad spoke again.

“If you could spare a few minutes, it’d mean a great deal to me if you would share what’s been troubling you since yesterday, the part that isn’t about your mother.”

And…

Damn.

Two things had been cemented during this visit:

His mother had always been his mother…

And his father had always been his dad.

“There’s a problem at home,” Remy told him. “It’s getting sorted, and I’ll finish handling it when we get back.”

“This problem would be?” Guillaume prompted.

Remy hesitated.

His mother had always been his mother, and as such, his attempt at trying to have an important and long overdue conversation with her had the results it had.

But his father had always been his dad, this visit had been the worst on him, and Remy had told Wyn that at the very least from their time in NOLA, he wanted to figure shit out with his father.

It was time to figure that shit out.

“The woman I was with between leaving Wyn and finding her again is causing problems. She’s targeted Sah, and yesterday, she broke into our house and was caught by the police in Wyn’s closet, filling garbage bags with her things.”

The color drained from Guillaume’s face.

“She was caught, Papa,” Remy said gently. “I have a friend who’s a cop who’s helping out, and I have a plan for when I get home to deal with it.”

He could see his father was getting angry now, not at Remy, at Myrna.

“That plan would be?” he asked.

“I’m going to speak to her. I’m going to accept the responsibility I hold in hurting her and not communicating well with her, and I’m going to ask her to leave us alone.”

“Do you think this will work?” Guillaume queried with open disbelief. “I don’t have to tell you her behavior is extreme, fiston.”

“I’ve no idea. I just know it’s the right thing to do.”

“What did she do to Sabre?”

He wanted to share this less than the other, but he didn’t hesitate before he gave it to his dad.

“Sah liked her, more than Manon and Yves, who both weren’t big fans. She knew that, so she tracked him down and told him I got her pregnant and kicked her out because she wouldn’t get an abortion, none of which, obviously, was true.”

“Mon Dieu!”

Definitely pissed now.

“Dad, it’s going to get handled one way or another.”

Guillaume shook his head. “I do not understand what is becoming of this world.”

Which meant none of his father’s mistresses had behaved so badly, or they’d been easy to manage if they tried.

Remy didn’t go there.

“Do you need anything from me?” Guillaume asked.

He shook his head. “No, Dad. But thank you.”

Guillaume nodded.

Remy went for it.

“I chose poorly,” he admitted.

Guillaume tilted his head, his gaze growing soft, and he replied, “Fiston, we, none of us know the demons that plague a soul. Their purpose is to stay hidden and wreak havoc on the ones who love their host the most. I think you and I, and Wyn, we all know this.”

He clapped a hand on Remy’s shoulder and left it there before he continued.

“Now you have glimpsed this woman’s demons, and you’ve made the decision to treat her like she is as the rest of us are in one way or another, driven by invisible demons to do harm. And you intend to offer compassion.” He squeezed Remy’s shoulder. “Honestly, except for when I learned you and Wyn were reconciling, I’ve never been prouder. And, son, you have, over your years, given me many reasons to be proud.”

Remy held his father’s gaze, pushing aside the recent memory of his talk with his mother, pushing aside all the shit that was going down with Myrna, pushing aside how his family was getting dragged through it right along with him, and rooting himself in that moment.

Eyes locked to his boy, Guillaume knew the exact time to stop holding Remy by the shoulder and instead, tug his son into his arms and hold him a different way.

It was not lost on Remy that he’d held Sah in the exact same manner not too long ago when emotion had overwhelmed his boy.

It was just the first time in his life that he felt what Sah felt.

And fuck.

It was beautiful.