“Please, Mom—” Auden tried again.
“You know it isn’t,” Pippa spat.
“Your father and stepmother did that to me,” I retorted. “If your father found someone else he loved, after committing his love to me, that was not okay. But there was a way to go about handling that. How he did it was not that way. I reacted and they had consequences, frankly, that they deserved. I shouldn’t have allowed you children to see that but that’s the only thing I did wrong. The rest, they bought that. They bought it. You betray someone, you have no choice but to live with the beast your betrayal created. What you’re doing to Ash, she didn’t buy that.”
“Uncle Lawrie,” Auden beseeched.
“Your sister did this, pal, it is not good. So she also answers for it,” Lawrie said firmly and calmly, but there was disappointment in his voice.
Auden’s face set.
“This is not my girl,” I stated, my eyes never leaving my daughter.
“I had to move from my school. I had to find friends. Polly’s popular and she’s nice to me,” she returned, strangely not blaming me for them having to move but I didn’t have a mind to that.
“Polly is totally a bitch.” I whirled at Aisling entering the conversation. Surprisingly, she wasn’t done speaking. “Everyone knows it. And to be a friend, you have to be a bitch too. And she’s not popular. She’s feared.”
I whirled back to my daughter, raising my brows. “Is that what you want? Do you want to be feared?”
“Mom, come on. Lay off,” Auden ground out.
“Polly’s history,” I declared.
“Mom!” Pippa shouted.
“My girl does not hang with mean girls,” I informed her.
“Mom, goddammit, lay off,” Auden clipped.
My gaze shot to him. “Language,” I snapped.
“You’re losing it,” he returned.
“Of course I am,” I replied. “I’m dealing with my daughter who I cannot wrap my head around the fact she’s been a bully at all, much less to a girl I care about deeply,” I retorted.
“You need to calm the fuck down,” he shot back.
“Language!” I bit out.
“Fuck you! Fuck that! Fuck this!” he suddenly shouted and my back shot straight.
“Auden,” Lawrie growled, coming close to me.
“Do not speak to your mother that way,” Mickey waded in, coming to my other side.
“Fuck you too!” Auden ignored Lawr and said to Mickey. “You can’t tell me shit.”
“Enough!” I screeched and the room stilled. I turned eyes to my son. “Give your Uncle Lawrie your car keys.”
“What?” he asked sharply. “Why?”
“Do it…now,” I whispered, my voice trembling.
“I’m not—” he began.
“Keys, pal, you’re not going to make your mother ask again,” Lawrie stated, moving to my son with his palm up.
I turned and caught sight of Aisling and Cillian, anger and horror and sadness searing through me that all this time my daughter was a part of Aisling fading.
“I’m so sorry,” I whispered.
Tears formed in her eyes.
Cillian shuffled protectively closer to his sister.
Seeing that, I stomped to my phone on the kitchen counter. I snatched it up, slid my finger on the screen and put it to my ear.
It rang once.
“Are the kid’s all right?” Conrad asked in greeting.
He sounded very concerned.
That did not dawn on me.
“Auden’s grounded,” I announced. “He cursed in my home even after I told him not to and then he did it directly to both me and Mickey.”
“Shit,” Conrad muttered, a surprising response but one that was lost on me.
“And our daughter is a bully. She’s hanging with bullies and she defends her position that she doesn’t say cruel things, but she doesn’t deny she participates by not only egging it on by laughing but also not doing what she can to stop it or remove herself from it,” I shared.
“Jesus Christ.” Conrad was still muttering but now doing it sounding angry.
“She further defends herself by saying I taught her that garbage with what happened between you and me and Martine.”
“That’s ridiculous,” he bit out and that got to me, making my body jerk.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s ridiculous. What happened with you and Martine is not that. There’s no excuse for bullying.”
I didn’t know what to make of his shocking show of support but at that juncture I had no choice but to roll with it.
“I want you to come and get them. I don’t know what you and Martine have planned for Thanksgiving but I will not have my children under my roof behaving this way. They can come back after Olympia apologizes to Aisling and ends her association with Polly, who’s the ringleader of the mean girls. As for Auden, he must apologize to Mickey and me.”
“We’re not going back there, Mom,” Auden called and I turned to him.
“You’ll do what I say. I’m going to rescue Thanksgiving for my brother and the other man in my life who’s never treated me like dirt and his kids who are good kids who are also unfailingly kind and sweet. And as much as it pains me to admit, my children being present will negate those efforts.”
Auden opened his mouth but I turned away when Conrad said in my ear. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
Of course he would.
“That would be appreciated,” I said acidly then hung up.
I whirled around. “Your father is coming. Go get your jackets,” I ordered.
“We’re not going back there,” Auden repeated.
“You most certainly are,” I returned. “Get your jackets.”
Now Pippa was cowering into Auden in a way that didn’t sit well with me but I couldn’t pay attention to that because Auden looked to Mickey.
“I’m sorry. I was out of line. It’ll never happen again,” he declared.
I drew a sharp breath into my nose.
“’Preciate that, bud, but you gotta turn that to your mother,” Mickey replied like Lawrie, firm, but calm, and disappointed.
Auden looked to me. “I’m sorry, Mom. I shouldn’t have said those things, but we had a really bad morning and last night wasn’t great either and we’ve both had enough.”
Other things were beginning to trouble me at his words but before I could latch on, Lawrie spoke.