“No,” she boomed. Zero to sixty, just like that. “You know you cannot do that!”
“Mom,” I said calmly. “How am I supposed to have a real relationship with him if he doesn’t know everything about me?” She opened her mouth to counter and I plowed over her. “Look what it did to Madden.”
She levied a glare. “You can’t.”
I glared right back. “I love Ashton. Way more than I ever loved Madden. And I won’t do that to him. I won’t hurt him by keeping secrets.” My mouth screwed down tight.
Her eyes were wet and scared. “Tally, we agreed not to say anything.”
“No.” My fingers curled into fists. “Youagreed. I was just a kid doing what my mom told me.”
“I was trying to protect you. To protectus.” She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. “It was the only option.”
I sighed and squeezed her shoulder. “I know. You did the right thing. At the time. But it feels like that was a different life. I’m different now. I’m grown. I have dreams.”
She gulped back a sob.
I squeezed again. “I want to get married and have a family with him. Probably.” If he’d even want me when he found out.
It was way too soon to be making those kinds of declarations, but I couldn’t picture our relationship heading in any other direction. Ashton was thirty-two years old. His family constantly teased him about his single status, making comments about how if he didn’t hurry up and procreate, he was going to be eighty by the time his kids were grown.
Mom grabbed onto the wordprobablylike it was the last seat on the last helicopter out of a war torn country. “Exactly. Probably is not definitely. Definitively. It’s not one hundred percent certain.” Her gaze flashed to me, pleading. “We didn’t make it this far on carelessness. On trusting people we weren’t fully certain of.”
“Mom.” I groaned. The thought of telling Ashton everything had felt freeing. To have it off my chest, to have him with me in this felt like the right thing to do.
She flipped the blinker, still following the line of Duprees in front of us. “What happens if they find out that he knows? Or what happens if things don’t work out with Ashton? Think about that. Think about Theo and Charlie. Think about yourself.” She shook her head adamantly. “You can’t only think about what you want.”
“So what? I make a life with him and never tell him thewhole truth? You want me to go to my grave with this?” I threw my hands up. “Or, I tell him twenty years from now and he’s so angry that I lied to him, that he leaves me?”
“I don’t know!” Her pupils had swallowed the brown of her irises. “I’m doing my best, okay?”
I sighed and let my head fall against the headrest. She sniffled and I watched her as she drove. She was a good mom. A really good mom. She’d sacrificed so much for me, for Brianna, for Theo and Charlie. She was the kind of person who put a brave face on and did whatever needed to be done no matter how hard or scary. But she was more than brave, she was resilient. The kind of person who would pack up her girls, and her two grandkids, in the middle of the night, and disappear without a trace. She’d start over somewhere new like Seddledowne. She kept her head down and her nose clean and she never complained about the hand life had dealt her.
She was right. If I told Ashton everything and the wrong people found out, it wasn’t just my life that would be affected.
I leaned my head against the passenger side window. “Fine. I won’t say everything.”
Mom’s face relaxed. “Thank you,” she whispered. “You should tell him the other stuff though.” Her mascara had created abstract art beneath her eyes. “I’m so sorry. For everything. I never should’ve married him.”
“Stop beating yourself up.” I searched the console for a tissue. I found a fast food napkin and handed it to her. “You were broken hearted and alone with your two daughters, and you thought you were making a good decision. He fooled us all.” I shook my head. “Let’s have a good day, okay?”
She blew her nose. “Yeah. Let’s have a good day.”
An hour later, I was in my bedroom at the little house, tearing through a box labeled Tally’s clothes. They were my clothes. I’d labeled the box. So where was my freaking swimsuit?
Brooklyn knocked on my open door, wearing her string bikini and a pair of jean cut-offs. “You almost ready?” Her eyes scanned the room from floor to vaulted ceiling. “This place is sick.”
“It is,” I said, still searching. “I haven’t lived anywhere this nice since…before.”
Anna was next to her, wearing a slightly more modest bikini and similar shorts. She looked at her phone. “Everyone’s at the lake, waiting on us.”
I threw my hands up. “I can’t find my suit.”
Anna snapped her fingers, flipped around and walked down the hall, disappearing out the front door.
Brooklyn joined me beside the bed, sorting through the second open box of clothes.
I lifted a pile of jeans and dropped them, frustrated. “It’s not here. I don’t know what happened to it.”
