The Christmas Dare Page 29

  Chapter 29

  Kelsey spent the next four days at her father’s condo, trying to figure out how she was going to approach Filomena. She did a lot of self-reflecting and made an appointment with Theo’s therapist, who helped her develop a plan of action.

  She learned she was enmeshed with her mother, which was typically what happened to the children of parents with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Kelsey’s personal work centered around setting boundaries, letting go of blaming herself for things that weren’t her fault, accepting her mother as she was and having no expectations that Filomena would ever change, and to stop putting the wants and needs of others ahead of her own.

  Kelsey’s central goal was to disentangle her life from her mother’s and find out who she was and where she belonged. Meeting Noah again had started her on that inner journey, but she couldn’t use him as a crutch.

  This was her work and she had to do it alone.

  With that thought in mind, she did not call or text him. If they were meant to be together, then their relationship would weather this and time away from him would not destroy what they’d started to build.

  And if not? Then letting go of him would be part of her journey too.

  One thing she discovered was that she did not want to be Lionel Berg’s campaign manager. This wasn’t to keep from ruffling Filomena’s feathers, but because she’d only gone into politics to please her mother.

  What she really wanted was to do what she’d studied in college—hospitality. As a child, she’d fantasized about running her own B&B and being at the Rockabye had put her back in touch with that long-forgotten dream. She had some savings that could keep her afloat until she found an entry-level job at a hotel. Sure, her finances would take a hit, but Kelsey was frugal by nature and cutting back wouldn’t be so hard, especially if it put her in touch with her heart’s desire.

  And when she called Lionel Berg to turn down his offer, and he upped her salary yet again, one thing held Kelsey solid in her resolve. Tasha’s final dare.

  Please yourself.

  In order to complete her Christmas of Yes, that included saying “no” to things that weren’t right for her.

  The journey was scary, and she missed Noah so much. At least a dozen times she’d picked up the phone to contact him and had to force herself to put it back down without calling or texting. Every time she resisted, she felt her resolve strengthen. Whatever happened, she would get through this and be stronger for it.

  On Saturday morning, December 21, two weeks after her failed wedding to Clive, Kelsey understood what she had to do in order to fully move on with her life. She marshaled her courage, bid Theo and Leah farewell as they left on their Christmas cruise, and drove to her mother’s house.

  She parked at the curb and saw a red Corvette that belonged to her cousin Pamela sitting in the driveway next to Filomena’s Town Car.

  That threw her for a loop.

  She remembered what the therapist had said. “Don’t be surprised when she replaces you right away. People with NPD have to get validation from somewhere since they can’t self-validate.”

  The therapist had taught her that this external validation was known as narcissistic supply and the person with NPD was as addicted to the validation as surely as any drug. Kelsey didn’t matter to her mother as a person, only as source of her emotional supply.

  And if she wasn’t plying her mother with attention, she was out of favor, devalued, and discarded.

  That tidbit of information had knocked her sideways but strengthened her resolve to extricate herself from her mother’s clutches. It looked like Pamela had gotten sucked in.

  She blew out her breath and practiced the speech she’d rehearsed with the therapist. This was one of the hardest things she would ever do in her life.

  Just as she was about to get out of the car, an Uber pulled up behind Kelsey’s Mercedes and Tasha got out. She hadn’t heard from her friend since she’d told her good-bye when she’d left Christmas Island and told Tasha she needed to be alone. Her friend had been giving her the space she needed to sort things out.

  Instant relief splashed over her. She wouldn’t have to do this alone.

  Kelsey lowered her window. “What are you doing here?”

  “Theo texted and told me you’re about to beard the lion in her den.” Tasha ran around to the passenger side door and hopped inside Kelsey’s car. “How are you doing?”

  “Not so good.”

  Tasha reached to squeeze her hand. “I’m here for you.”

  “Oh, Tasha.” Kelsey swallowed back the tears.

  Her best friend leaned across the seat to hug her hard. “Look at it this way. You’ve always known something was wrong. Now you know it’s not you. Now you can start taking care of yourself instead of your mother.”

  Kelsey nodded. “It’s going to be so freeing.”

  Tasha patted Kelsey’s cheek. “You’re finally going to get to be you.”

  “I just feel so sorry for her. Her life is miserable, and she can’t see how she’s creating it.”

  “You feel sorry for her because you are a kind and loving person.” Tasha put a hand to Kelsey’s back. “Your mother is not kind or loving. She is not feeling the same tenderness for you that you feel for her. She’s broken, and you can’t fix her. All you can do is accept the truth.”

  “I know. That’s why I’m tearing up. She’ll never be able to see how she’s the instrument of her own pain.”

  “You can’t save her. Feeling sorry for her only drags you down,” Tasha said. “And if you keep trying to help her, she’ll take you down with her.”

  Kelsey swiped the tears from her eyes. “I know.”

  “You have to invest your love where it will be reciprocated,” Tasha said. “Like me with Sean. I kept trying to make things work with Tag all those years when he clearly did not love me the way I thought I loved him. I kept trying to make something right that wasn’t right. It took Sean’s steady patience to show me how blind I’d been. Accept that not everyone will love you the way you deserve to be loved and let them go. Love the ones who love you back.”

  “So, things are good between you two?”

  Tasha grinned. “Where do you think I’ve been for the last five days? I’m still in Twilight.”

  “In bed with your navy SEAL?”

  “Nope. He won me over. We’re going to date for quite a while before we get into bed again.”

  “I am so happy for you, Tasha.”

  “Hey, be happy for yourself too. You and Noah have got a good thing going on.”

  Kelsey shook her head. She wasn’t sure of that at all. Was it too late to mend fences with Noah? Had things gone too far? Could he forgive her for shoving him away? For accusing him of cooking up a ploy with Tasha to get back at Filomena? She felt so stupid for even letting that thought pop into her head, much less express it to him.

  But right now, she couldn’t worry about Noah. A monumental task lay in front of her.

  “Do you want me to go in with you?” Tasha asked.

  Kelsey shook her head. “I have to do this alone.”

  “I understand. But I’ll be here waiting for you.”

  “Thank you so much. I can’t begin to tell you how much you mean to me.”

  “Prove it,” Tasha said. “Consider this your sixth and final dare. Break up with your mother. Get in there and get this thing done!”

  When Kelsey rang the doorbell, Pamela answered. Immediately, she shrank back as if she’d encountered a rattlesnake on the front porch.

  “It’s okay,” Kelsey said. “I get it. You’re in, I’m out. Good luck.”

  “Cousin, you have been a terrible daughter—”

  She raised a hand. “Look, we don’t need to interact. I just need to see my mother.”

  “Aunt Filomena doesn’t want to see you.”

  “That may be, but she’s going to see me anyway.” Kelsey pushed Pamela aside.

  Her cousin’s jaw dropped but she scram
bled out of the way.

  Kelsey walked into the living room to find her mother sitting on the couch with her feet propped on the coffee table, a computer in her lap, piles of folders and papers stacked around her.

  “We were having a planning meeting,” Pamela mumbled behind Kelsey. Poor dumb Pamela had no idea what she was getting herself into. She’d find out soon enough.

  Filomena shot Kelsey a haughty expression, nose turned up, eyes narrowed. How many times had Kelsey seen her pass out such scathing looks to her adversaries? A million? Two million? At least.

  “Well, well, look who comes crawling back,” her mother mocked, not even removing her feet from the coffee table, much less getting up.

  That attitude fortified Kelsey’s determination to see this through. “Hello, Mother.”

  “What do you want?” Filomena waved a hand. “We’re busy.”

  “I came to lodge a complaint.”

  “You? I should be the one lodging a complaint. You’re the one who treated me shabbily. Blocking my phone calls.”

  “I told you I needed some time alone to collect my thoughts. I blocked my phone so that I could have some privacy. It wasn’t about you. It was about me and what I needed to heal.”

  “That’s ridiculous. What about my needs? I needed you, Kelsey, and you abandoned me.” Filomena finally put her feet to the floor and her laptop aside.

  The therapist had warned her that the conversation might very well go like this.

  “That was unfair of you to fire me publicly.”

  “You left me no choice,” her mother raged, jumping to her feet. “You blocked me. I had to get your attention somehow.”

  “You tried to have me kidnapped. That got my attention.”

  “Little good it did me. Both my bodyguard and chauffeur quit over you.”

  “It wasn’t my fault, Mother.”

  “Nothing ever is, is it? You are blameless.”

  The therapist had also told her to expect Filomena to project her flaws onto Kelsey and warned her not to accuse Filomena of having Narcissistic Personality Disorder. She would only turn things around and say that Kelsey was the narcissist.

  “Mother, I’m sorry you feel this way. I understand how much emotional pain you are in.”

  Filomena’s face went blank. “I have no idea what you are talking about. I am absolutely fine. Pamela is with me now. She’s all I need.”

  “You went on television just to tell people you were firing me.”

  A cunning expression flared in her eyes. “Get over yourself. You’re not that important.”

  You’re not that important.

  How many times had she heard that over the course of her life? Hundreds. Thousands. All this time, her mother had been telling her exactly who she was, and Kelsey hadn’t been able to see it. The blind love a child had for her mother.

  But she saw it now. Clear as a windowpane.

  “You’ve kept me tied to your apron strings and that’s not healthy for either one of us. It’s time I stretch my wings and fly.”

  There was a flicker in Filomena’s eyes and for the briefest of seconds, Kelsey saw past the mask to the injured child her mother had once been. The look on her mother’s face hit her like a punch to the throat. She was terrified of being alone.

  “You cut your hair,” Filomena whispered, her voice softening. “You swore you’d never cut it after Chelsea died.”

  At the mention of her twin’s name, Kelsey sank her teeth into her bottom lip to stave off the tears. She couldn’t show any weakness. She and her mother had both suffered an impossible loss. Chelsea’s death tied them in a way nothing could ever separate.

  In a rush of almost unbearable empathy, she saw herself through her mother’s eyes. Kelsey looked exactly like the child Filomena had lost. A specter of what might have been. Maybe that was part of why she’d kept Kelsey so close. In her own dysfunctional way, Filomena had been trying to keep Kelsey nearby so that she didn’t lose her too.

  In that moment, Kelsey’s heart just broke, and she knew that while she would set strong boundaries and learn to stop feeding her mother’s need for narcissistic supply, she could not go “no contact” as many experts on NPD advised. For better or worse, Filomena was her mother and the only one she would ever have.

  She understood now why Theo stayed silent about her mother’s condition. Like Kelsey, he too had empathy for Filomena, even if she was unable to feel empathy for them.

  “It was time to let go of the past,” Kelsey said, brushing her fingers through her hair.

  “He’s to blame, isn’t he? That boy.” Her mother’s lip curled around her teeth. “That Joah.” Filomena knew his name. She was mispronouncing it on purpose to belittle him. She did it to other people too, calling Tasha, Tosha and Leah, Lizza.

  “His name is Noah and he told me how you threatened him when he showed up here trying to see me ten years ago.”

  “I did no such thing.” She drew up her spine, peered down her nose at Kelsey. “He made that up. He’s a white trash liar.”

  “I believe him.”

  Filomena’s expression shifted, and she looked even more cunning. “Okay, maybe I did threaten him, but I did nothing wrong. I was trying to protect my daughter. He deserved it.”

  And there it was in a nutshell. Her mother would never take responsibility for her actions. If anything, the therapist had underestimated how useless facing off with Filomena would be.

  “Okay, then.” Kelsey nodded. You couldn’t get water from a dry well. “That answers all my questions.”

  Filomena stared her down, eyes cold, unyielding. That tiny flicker of vulnerability over Chelsea was gone.

  Her mother was like a hawk—beautiful, powerful, killer instincts. And like a hawk, she was much better viewed from afar than close up. Kelsey could no more change the nature of her mother than she could change a hawk.

  Filomena was what she was. Kelsey wished she’d realized all this sooner rather than later. She could have had a much happier life, but she knew better now. She could go forth wiser and guilt free.

  It was past time to start living, and the first thing she was going to do was call Noah and ask him to forgive her.

  “I’m sorry, Mom, that things are the way they are.” She gave Filomena a tender loving smile filled with all the empathy she could muster.

  “Don’t you dare,” her mother yelled. “Don’t you dare smile at me.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You, acting so smug and superior. Like you’re better than me. You’re not better than me. You will never be better than me!”

  “I never thought I was better than you.” Kelsey felt her defenses go up, but as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she understood what was happening.

  Filomena was projecting her feelings of superiority and smugness onto Kelsey.

  “You know what? I love you, Mother. I always will, but I’m willing to let you live your life and I will live mine.”

  “Fine,” Filomena chuffed. “Get out of here. I don’t need you. I’ve never needed you. Your sister was the good one. Why did she have to be taken and you left behind?”

  In the past, such a harsh statement would have had Kelsey on her knees begging for Filomena’s forgiveness. But no more.

  “I know you don’t really mean that,” Kelsey said softly. “You’re just hurting and lashing out.”

  A hateful look crossed her mother’s face, and her hawkish chin jutted into the air. “I do mean it.”

  “I’m leaving now, Mother. I hope you have a Merry Christmas. We’ll talk again when you’re feeling better.”

  “Good, fine, go. I don’t want you. I never wanted you.” Filomena’s voice was stone. “Get out of my house. I dare you.”

  Chapter 30

  On rubber-band legs, Kelsey staggered out of the house, barely able to catch her breath. She’d been braced for this, well prepared, but it didn’t lessen the impact of what had happened.

  Tasha was sitting in the driver
’s seat of Kelsey’s Mercedes. Gratefully, Kelsey slipped into the passenger seat, trembling all over.

  “Sit back, relax, I’ve got this,” Tasha said and drove off.

  Kelsey clicked on her seat belt, put the seat back as far as it could go, closed her eyes, and took several long deep breaths. All these years, she’d believed that in order to be loved she had to put the needs of others first.

  It was how Filomena had trained her.

  What she’d learned from Noah and his friends and family and the quirky community of Twilight was that she was lovable just as she was. There was nothing she needed to do, no specific way she had to act, dress, or talk to deserve love.

  With Noah there was no line to toe. She could make mistakes and it would be okay. He didn’t hold her to impossibly high standards and she never had to worry that his love would be withdrawn arbitrarily.

  She opened one eye. “Where are we going?”

  “You leave that to me.”

  “Twilight?” Kelsey asked hopefully.

  “Where else?”

  An hour and fifteen minutes later, they arrived on Christmas Island. Kelsey had been napping and jerked awake as soon as the car stopped in the marina parking lot.

  “Oh look,” Tasha said. “There’s Santa.”

  “What?”

  Sure enough, there was a very tall Santa Claus coming to open the passenger door. Behind him were a throng of people looking as if they’d all been waiting for her.

  “Is this for the final round of the decorating contest judging?”

  “Yes,” Tasha said. “But it’s a little more than that.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, but Tasha didn’t answer.

  The door was thrown open and Santa, with a hearty “ho, ho, ho” reached for her hand. “Welcome to Christmas Island.”

  Kelsey looked into those familiar eyes and started laughing. Santa pulled her into his arms and spun her around in a wide circle.

  Over his shoulder, she saw the contest judges: Flynn and Jesse; Cash and Paige, who was still very pregnant; Sean and Raylene and Joel. And oh, there were Theo and Leah. They were supposed to be on their Christmas cruise. Why were they here?