Tryst Six Venom by Penelope Douglas

Does my mom know that’s how I see her, too? Somehow, she handles
everything.
“Perfect wife, perfect mother,” she murmurs. “Perfect house, on time for
every event, always looked impeccable, and that woman can schmooze a
room full of Norwegian investors without speaking a single word of
Norwegian, or a room full of good ol’ boys who think America’s decline
started with a woman’s right to vote.” She pauses. “She could do all that,
Clay. I can’t do any of that.” She turns her head toward me. “I mean, how
could she do all that? She would never have let me see her like this. Like
you’re seeing me now. What was her secret?”
I feel my lips press together for a split second before they open. “Mimi
was having an affair with the old sheriff.”
Her eyes narrow on me, and she cocks her head ever so slightly as her
chest caves. “What?”
I nod. “For thirty-four years,” I say. “They used to meet out at Two
Locks.”
Her mouth falls open a little, and I can see the wheels turning in her head
as her eyes go from confusion and disbelief to realization.
“That’s how she did it, Mom.” I keep my tone gentle. “That’s how she
put up with Grandpa and a life she didn’t love.”
She sits there, and I watch the news play out behind her eyes as the dots
connect. “How do you know this?”
“She has his letters hidden in the mantel in her room.”
Looking back now, that’s what Mimi was telling me at Fondue with
Father. How people like us, born with the duty to perpetuate this ‘empire’,
have a responsibility to not follow our hearts. But that doesn’t mean we can’t
have what we want. We just need to keep it a secret.
She knew that, because that was her life. She considers herself noble for
denying herself a man she really loved, because let’s be honest: a thirty-fouryear
affair was love.
She raised her daughter to commit to unhappiness, and they raised me to
keep my chin up and my mouth closed, as well.
“Perfect doesn’t exist,” I can only manage a whisper. “It never did.”
My grandmother may or may not have had choices, but my mom does.
And so do I.
In twenty years, I could be sitting here with my daughter, realizing I’d
lived a lie for a life that made me miserable, and given up the one person who