Two Little Secrets From My Boss

Chapter 127

Daphne’s POV

The twins are napping when my mother finds me in the garden.

I'm sitting on the stone bench beneath the old oak—the one place on the estate that feels removed from security cameras and household chaos.

The bench is worn smooth from years of weather, cool beneath my thighs even in the afternoon warmth. I come here when I need to think. When I need to remember that I'm a person, not just a mother or a wife or a target.

I don't hear Mom approach until she settles beside me, the warmth of her shoulder a foreign comfort.

She doesn't speak, doesn't ask permission to share the space—just sits, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes fixed on the same patch of sky I've been staring at for the past twenty minutes.

We sit in silence for a long moment. The afternoon light filters through leaves, dappling everything in gold and shadow.

A bird calls somewhere in the distance—something melodic and ordinary, the kind of sound I used to take for granted before my world narrowed to threats and protection.

I can feel words building in the space between us. Years of them, heavy and sharp-edged. All the things we never said. All the things we said too harshly. The slow accumulation of hurts calcified into distance.

Mom speaks first.

"I've been trying to figure out where to start." Her voice is quieter than I remember—smaller, somehow.

"I've been practicing this conversation in my head for three years, and now that you're actually sitting beside me, all the words feel inadequate."

"You don't have to."

"Yes, I do." She turns to look at me, and I'm startled by the rawness in her expression.

This is not the composed mother I grew up with, the one who always had answers, who never showed weakness. This is a woman who has been carrying something heavy for a very long time.

"Please, let me say this. I need to say this."

I nod slowly, my throat tight.

"When you told us you were pregnant, I handled it badly. I know that. I told you it was a mistake, that you were throwing away your future, that you couldn't possibly raise a child alone when you could barely manage your own life." She pauses, her voice cracking.

"I said things that no mother should ever say to her daughter. Things I've regretted every single day since."

"Mom…"

"I made you feel small. Incapable. I made you feel like you had to prove something to me instead of just... being supported. When you needed me most, I pushed you away with my fear and my judgment and my inability to accept that your life was your own to live."

Her hands twist together in her lap.

"I was so afraid you'd end up struggling, end up trapped, end up giving up your dreams the way I saw so many young mothers do. I thought I was protecting you. But I wasn't protecting you. I was trying to control you, and when you wouldn't be controlled, I punished you for it."

The old anger rises in my chest, familiar and bitter. I remember those conversations.

Remember crying in my tiny apartment after she'd said, ‘You're going to regret this. You're going to look back and wonder what you gave up.’

Remember the way her disapproval felt like a door slamming in my face.

But beneath the anger, something else stirs—exhaustion, grief. The desperate, childish longing for a mother I'd convinced myself I didn't need anymore.

"I didn't give up on anything," I say, and my voice comes out rougher than I intended. "Nina and Lisa are not what I gave up, they're what I chose. They're the best thing I've ever done."

"I know that now. I've watched you with them these past few days, and I see who you've become. You're an extraordinary mother, Daphne." Mom’s eyes are wet.

"You're patient and fierce and loving in ways I never taught you—ways you figured out on your own, despite everything I said. And I'm so proud of you. I'm so incredibly proud, and I'm so ashamed that I wasn't there to see it happen."

"You weren't there because I wouldn't let you be there." The admission costs me something.

"I was so angry, so determined to prove I could do it without you. Every time you called, I heard criticism even when you weren't offering it. I built walls so high I couldn't see over them anymore."

"You built those walls because I gave you reason to. Because I made it clear that my love came with conditions, with expectations, with judgments. That's not how mothers are supposed to love their children."

Her hand finds mine on the bench between us. Tentative and trembling slightly.

"I'm sorry, Daphne. I'm so sorry I wasn't what you needed. I'm sorry I made you feel like you had to become someone else to earn my approval. I'm sorry I missed the first years of my granddaughters' lives because I was too stubborn to admit I was wrong."

Her fingers are cold against mine. Familiar, somehow, despite the years. I remember these hands braiding my hair before school.

Pressing Band-Aids to scraped knees. Holding mine during thunderstorms when I was small enough to believe parents could protect against anything.

"I don't know if I can forgive you yet." The words come out honest, unvarnished. "I want to. I think I want to. But there's so much hurt, Mom. So many years of it. I can't just... erase that because you said the right things."

"I'm not asking you to erase anything." Mom squeezes my hand gently. "I'm asking for a chance. To be here now, to know my granddaughters, to show you, day by day, that I can be different. That I can be the mother you deserved all along."

I don't respond with words. I can't—my throat is too tight, my eyes too blurred with tears I've been holding back for years.

Instead, I lean into her shoulder. Let myself be held for the first time since I was nineteen years old and thought I didn't need anyone.

Mom’s arms come around me immediately, pulling me close. Her sweater smells like lavender and something else, something that triggers memories I'd buried deep: being small, being safe, being loved without complication.

The tears come quietly, soaking into the soft wool against my cheek. Not forgiveness, not yet, but a door opening after being sealed shut for so long. Light coming through the cracks.

We sit there until the shadows lengthen and the afternoon turns golden. We don't talk about the threats or the security or Eleanor's machinations. We just breathe together, mother and daughter, learning what it feels like to be close again.