The Weakness in Me (30 page)

“You’re right,” Jason conceded.
“But it wasn’t for Missy and my mother to decide, Sammy. You see
that
, don’t you?”

“Yeah, I just wish I knew what I did to make her hate me so much that she’d plot to rip us apart like that,” she shook her head, sadly.

“Well, then, I guess that’s what we need to find out so we can all move forward, huh?” Jason said, determinedly, grabbing Sammy’s hand and pulling her out the door again.

Missy took a deep breath, steeling herself for the conversation she was about to have with Jason’s mother. Pushing the door bell, she wrapped the coat around her body and waited.

“What are you doing here?” Jamie asked, pulling her pink silk robe closed before yanking the blonde through the door.
“You’re supposed to be waiting for Jason to get home from his date with Samantha!”

“They changed their plans,” she cleared her throat, watching the older woman barreling her way back to the bar bordering the living
room and kitchen. “Lucas wanted to have a sleepover with Corigan, so they stopped by to pick up his work clothes after dropping her off.”

“Perfect!” Jamie turned around, beaming.
“And Samantha went ballistic on him, right? Stormed out?”

“She started to,” Missy said, swallowing.

“Started to?” she asked, confused at the direction the conversation was moving.

“Jason stopped her.
Asked her if what they were seeing made any sense. He looked so desperate to make sure she didn’t get the wrong idea and I finally saw what I’d been missing all these years.”

“Saw what?” her eyes narrowed on the small blonde slumped on the leather sofa.

“They really do love each other. It’s not some rebound from her marriage. She’s really forgiven him and willing to try again,” she said, her eyes as wide with astonishment as they were when she’d made the discovery. “I think Chester is willing to do the same for us.”

“What does
their being in love have to do with anything?!” Jamie screeched.

“Why do you hate Samantha so much, Mrs. Wright?” Missy asked, mystified by the woman’s response to her news.
“Do you not want Jason to be happy? Because I’m pretty sure he is.”

“It’s not just her, Missy,” Jamie sighed, sinking into the couch, clutching her tumbler of scotch in one hand and setting the bottle on the coffee table with the other.
“It’s that whole damn family.”

“Okay?” Missy looked at her, confused; taking a sip from the glass of water Jamie had given her before fixing her own drink.
“So why do you single out Samantha?”

“Because she’s the
only one trying to steal my son from me,” Jamie said, downing the rest of the scotch in her glass and refilling it immediately.

“I don’t think she’s trying—”

“I gave up everything for my husband. My youth, my ambition outside of our house, most of my friends,” she sighed. “Courtney, Miranda, McKenna and Jason became my everything. They were my sun, my moon, my Earth and they made all I gave up worth it. Their lives began and ended with me, too. They listened to everything I said and never questioned me, until that damn moving van pulled up to the house down the street,” her brow wrinkled at the memory of the day her life suddenly wasn’t good enough. “They pulled up in their car, in their Sunday best, and that little bitch stole my son’s heart away from me with one small stomp on his foot. He was lost. He didn’t ask me if he could play with her or if she could come over, he just did it. The girls quickly followed suit, talking about how amazing the Castle’s were and everything they had, like what I provided for them was no longer sufficient for them,” she sneered, pouring herself another drink.

“Mrs. Wright, I think you’ve had enough,” Missy said, trying to grab the bottle of scotch from the table.

“It’s never enough, Missy,” she shook her head, pulling the bottle from her reach. “When that little boy lived there before, he always asked permission, and his mother always came over to spend time with me while the boys played. She and I were alike, we stayed at home to take care of our kids like our mothers taught us, and we took care of our husbands. Not Kelly though. Kelly was too good to associate herself with the likes of me,” Jamie’s scowl becoming more and more dangerous with every word and memory spilling from her mouth.

“Kelly worked, though.
My mom baby sat for the Castles until Samantha was old enough to take care of her sisters alone. My mom started to look in on them again after she kicked her husband out. I’m sure she wasn’t trying to slight you,” Missy tried to explain, softly, wanting to calm her down.

“That was part of it.
Her husband made enough that she didn’t
need
to work. She only did it to prove a point…that she didn’t need her husband either. That’s why my
husband never wanted me to work. It’s any wonder she couldn’t keep him around and interested.  And I
know
that Mr. Castle wished Kelly was more like me because I had to yank his hand from my thigh at a dinner party one night right before Kelly kicked him out,” she said, too happy to think about how Kelly’s cheating spouse had wanted her.

“That’s it?
That’s why you don’t like their family? Because your kids got along? And Kelly worked?” Missy asked, incredulously. Disbelieving that this was the entire reason Jamie had been so bent on getting Jason away from Samantha, she pressed her lips into a thin line, waiting for a better answer.

Jamie sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose before looking at Missy, warily.
“Don’t you see? I was two semesters away from a degree in nursing when I got pregnant with Jason. It was unexpected, but I was so happy. So was his father, but in order for us to be together, for him to even consider marrying me, I had to drop out of school. He already had an engineering career established and he said he’d be damned if he’d ever considered marrying a woman who was so focused on her hobbies that it overrode his and their family’s needs. He didn’t want strangers to raise his children, not that he ever participated either, but he said he was secure in the knowledge that I was always there waiting for him when he got home. It made him happy to know that my family was my entire world. He never doubted that I wouldn’t ever leave him.  By Jason choosing Samantha, I feel like he’s telling me who I am and what I’m about isn’t good enough.”

“So you wanted Jason to marry someone who felt the same?” she asked, looking at Jamie, her mouth gaping in surprise. “I have a career, too, you know?”

“Yes, Missy, your little hair business can be done out of the house while the kids are at school though. Besides, it’s really more of a hobby, isn’t it?” Jamie narrowed her eyes, disapprovingly at the blonde on her couch. “Plus, I think my son deserves better than a career minded woman who will only leave him looking for something outside their relationship. Samantha has a large business with employees that will always come before my son and he’ll grow to be resentful. I mean, look how easily it was to get him to stray to you all those years ago. She didn’t know how to keep him interested in her before she even finished college. How is she supposed to keep him satisfied now that she has a kid with a different man and a company to divide her attention?”

“You think he cheated on Samantha with me?” Missy looked at Jamie, shocked that the woman didn’t seem to know the truth.

“You said the plan worked, I assumed that meant you’d stolen him away, but then she found out and ruined everything. Of course he’d deny it and try to get her back,” Jamie shrugged. “It’s a natural guy response, but I figured after all the years apart, he’d understand the favor we’d done for him and move on.”

“He didn’t cheat, Jamie.
He told me to leave,” Missy confessed. “The only reason the plan worked was that Samantha’s sister witnessed me trying to take advantage of him while he was passed out.”

“He didn’t?” Jamie jumped from the couch and stalked back to the bar.
“But…I heard Samantha walked in on you guys naked…”

“No, Mrs. Wright,” Missy shook her head again and looked down, ashamed of her actions for the first time.
“I wanted to help you and I hadn’t gotten over missing my chance with Jason, so I used his total intoxication to split them up.”

“And?
You couldn’t figure out a way to do it again?”

“I could have, sure.
But instead I told them the truth, all of it. Including how I’d gotten in, because in that moment, I figured something out about myself, too,” Missy took another sip of her water, trying to gather the courage to tell Jamie something she wasn’t going to like. “I didn’t miss my chance with Jason. I never had a chance, he always belonged to her. I can’t let another chance with Chester slip through my fingers because of something that never existed.”

“No!
He doesn’t! He deserves to be with someone who will put him and his needs first. Someone who isn’t too preoccupied making a life for herself that she doesn’t know how to be a good wife. Someone who will give him a son to call his own. Someone who doesn’t expect him to take care of some brat that isn’t even his!” Jamie finished, throwing her tumbler across the room, shattering it against the tile fireplace. “You know, that bitch doesn’t even know how to cook. How can she possibly make him happy?”

“Because she’s not dependent on me to find her happiness, Mother,” a voice sounded from the doorway.
Jamie lifted her shocked eyes to find her son, staring at her, his face a mask of seething anger. “It’s not her fault that you wanted to be more than a housewife and dad wouldn’t let you,” he continued, walking further into the room, Samantha trailing behind him with a sad look on her face. “He didn’t keep you prisoner in this house, though, that was your decision. You could’ve had a hobby other than drinking and burying yourself in lives of your children.”

“How dare you—

“I’m not finished,” Jason said, calmly. “You hide behind your life coach and Sven. You try to convince yourself that it’s the life you wanted, but you punish anyone who doesn’t make the same choices for their life,” he continued, picking up the nearly empty bottle of scotch from the floor next to the coffee table. “Hell, you do it to your own daughters, too! But there is nothing to stop you from finding friends you
don’t
have to pay or scheme with, there’s nothing to stop you from finding happiness outside of this bottle or meddling in what you think is best for us. We love you, but if you keep this up, you aren’t going to have anyone but dad. Is that what you want?”

“No,” his mother whispered.

“Now, I’d really like to have you as part of my life, but you’re going to have accept that Sammy and Corigan are family to me, too.”

“But—

“No, buts, Mother. She makes me happy. She’s always made me happy. Can’t you find a way to be happy for me? For us?”

Jamie turned from her son, effectively closing the door on his offer, because she wasn’t sure she could see past how wrong she thought Samantha was for him.

“Fine, then. You know how to find us, if you change your mind, but until you are willing to accept
everything
and
everyone
in my life, don’t expect me to answer your call,” he turned, ushering Samantha out of the room in front of him, her eyes still wide at all she’d heard from Jason and Jamie.

“Why?” Missy asked after the door closed behind them, looking at Jamie’s shoulders shaking with grief.

“I’m not ready to fix it yet,” she said. “He’ll want me to play nice and get to know her daughter. I can’t,” she admitted, looking at her friend with red-rimmed eyes, still half crazed from the encounter. Jamie knew she hadn’t quite hit bottom yet and had no desire to claw her way back to the top, not even for her son. She’d already lost him anyway. Maybe Missy was right, that she’d never had him. That he’d always belonged to Samantha.

**

Jason paused outside the front door of his mother’s house and grabbed Sammy’s hand.
“I’m so sorry for all of this,” he begged, hoping she was okay.

“It’s fine, Jason,” she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose in frustration.
“I knew she didn’t like me, but I never realized that it wasn’t even me she didn’t like, it was what I represented.”

“Believe me, I know!” Jason said, pulling her down the walkway toward her Toyota.
“If she’d just found a Bunco game or a quilting circle or something to call her own…”

“Now Jason, we both know your mother had a hobby,” Sammy couldn’t suppress the laughter bubbling inside her.
“Collecting employees/friends who would tell her what she wanted to hear and meddling in the lives of her children, under the guise of looking after them,” she straightened her face. “Please, if I ever try to do that with Corigan, smack me. Seriously, rough me up a little bit.”

“Sammy, you know I’d never--”

“Jason, promise me. I’m serious,” she said, her green eyes blazing into his.

“Fine, I promise,” he smiled.
“I don’t understand it. She works so hard to raise us to be our own people, then it’s like she doesn’t trust us to make our own decisions about what’s best for us,” he finished, shaking his head and putting the car into gear.