After all, the old me had threatened to leave more than once.
I didn't correct her. I just lowered my gaze. "Just need to clear my head."
Ida didn't notice anything different about me. Instead, she pulled me into her arms.
"Roland, I've been waiting for you to reach out these past few days."
Waiting for me to reach out?
But I remembered clearly. Every time I'd texted her before, asking her to come home, all I ever got back was an impatient brush-off.
She cupped my face in both hands and stared at me, her eyes dead serious.
"All you had to do was say the word, and I would've come straight home. But you didn't."
Ida's tone was full of complaints.
As if the person who'd spent the past few days at another man's side wasn't her at all.
I didn't call her out on it. Instead, a faint smile tugged at my lips.
Ida mistook it for forgiveness. She rose on her tiptoes and pressed a light kiss to the corner of my mouth.
"Roland, I just knew it. You're not like your father."
Not like my father?
The words left her mouth without warning and drove straight into my heart like a blade. The pain stole my breath.
She knew. She knew exactly how much damage my mother's affair and abuse had done to my father and me.