Chapter 13 - MARGARET CHOOSES
Margaret continued pressing Naomi privately.
“She’s your sister.”
Naomi answered:
“Yes.”
“You’re destroying her.”
“No.”
“She lost the council.”
“Temporarily.”
“The foundation board removed her.”
“That board made its own decision.”
“Friends are avoiding her.”
“I don’t control them.”
Margaret began crying.
“What do you want me to do?”
Naomi looked at her.
“Stop asking me to fix what Carla did.”
Margaret covered her face.
Then:
“She needs us.”
“So does Lily.”
Margaret flinched.
Naomi continued:
“And every time you say Carla needs us, you mean everyone else should move first.”
Silence.
Months later Margaret did something new.
Carla called during a family therapy session demanding Margaret contact Naomi.
Margaret said:
“No.”
Carla screamed.
Margaret cried.
Still:
“No.”
Afterward Margaret told her therapist:
“I felt like I abandoned her.”
The therapist asked:
“Did you?”
Margaret thought.
“No.”
“What did you do?”
“I let her have her own consequence.”
That was the beginning.
Not redemption.
Beginning.
Margaret’s therapy exposed another fear.
She believed if Carla faced full consequences, Carla would disappear.
Not metaphorically.
Leave the family.
Stop calling.
Move away.
Cut contact.
Margaret had spent decades preventing that possibility.
The therapist asked:
“What would happen if she did?”
Margaret whispered:
“I would lose my daughter.”
“You cannot control whether an adult daughter stays by removing every reason she might leave.”
Margaret cried.
That was the bargain she had been making.
Protect Carla from consequence.
In exchange, keep Carla close.
But closeness purchased by rescuing someone from reality is unstable.
Margaret slowly learned to tolerate Carla’s anger without fixing it.
May you like
The first months were brutal.
Also necessary.
