She really hadn’t been having him on when she’d said she couldn’t explain why she couldn’t fall in love with Neely. Christian actually found himself feeling sorry for the man. Because,sweet Fanny Adams, Emily was usually good at getting to the point. But he’d listened to her try to explain herself for at leasttwo minutes, and he was more confusednowthan before she started.
He sat back in the chair. Opened his mouth, then closed it again when he realized he didn’t know what to ask or where to begin to try to unravel the convoluted strings of her explanation. Finally, he settled on, “Tell me more about this defect that runs in your family. You said three generations, yeah? What does that mean?”
“Right.” She nodded and dropped her feet to the floor. Leaning forward, she said, “It all starts with my grandparents. Not my mother’s parents. I never met them. They died before I was born. It’s my father’s parents I’m talking about, Grandpa Joe and Grandma Ivy. Between the two of them, they have eleven marriages. Six for my grandpa and five for my grandma. Although, they’ll probably be tiedsoon at six and six. Grandma Ivy called me last month to tell me she’s in the middle of divorce proceedings from her fifth husband because she’s fallen in love.Again.” Emily made a face. “This time it’s with one of the men who attends physical therapy with her at the retirement home.”
“How old is your grandmother?” he asked.
“Eighty-three.”
“Wow. Impressive.”
“What’s impressive?”Emily frowned. “That she’s lived to be eighty-three or that she’s racked up five-going-on-six marriages in that time? Because believe me, Grandma Ivy is cute, but she’s no Elizabeth Taylor.”
A glimmer of understanding sparked to life. “So that’s your grandparents,” he said. “Which I assume is the first generation. Tell me about your parents, the second generation.”
“Okay.” She dipped herchin. “So my folks got married when they were both nineteen. They had me a year later. And two years after that, they got divorced. My mother has since proceeded to marry and divorcesixother men over the span of my lifetime. Right now, she’s single. But she keeps texting me pictures of this oily-looking used-car salesman from south Florida, so I expect I’ll be receiving a wedding invitationin the mail any day now. And if she thinks I’m going to another online registry to buy her another damn blender, she’s got another think coming.”
Her face was mutinous. Christian wasn’t sure she’d ever looked more lovable. Except for perhaps when she’d woken him from his nightmare with an expression of concern. Or maybe when she’d stepped in front of him to stop a bullet, her piquant chinthrust up in defiance. Then again, there was the time…Oh, sod it all!Fact was, Emilyalwayslooked lovable.
“And then there’s my father,” she continued, blowing out a resigned breath. “He’s on marriage number four. Which, given my family’s track record, puts him at the back of the pack. But not if you take into account the number of women who’ve lived with him over the years.”
Christianwas almost afraid to ask. “How many?”
“Twelve.” She flashed the number on her fingers. “Some have lasted a couple of months. Two have lasted a couple of years. None have outlasted my mother, who managed to tie him down for a wholethreeyears.”
“That’s loads of upheaval for a kid.” Christian imagined the men and women, thestrangers, who must’ve passed in and out of Emily’s life.
A stranger his mother had dragged home soon after his father’s death was the reason he… No. He pushed the memory away and hoped to God Emily had never suffered at the hands of one of her parents’ lovers the way he had suffered at the hands of—
He couldn’t say the man’s name. Not even in the privacy of his own mind.
“It wasn’t upheaval so much as neglect,” Emily said. “My folks were alwaysso busy chasing that shiny, new person who would make them feel young again, or excited about life again. And it’s easy to ditch one spouse and move on to another when you’re dirt poor and the divvying up of property isn’t an issue. For the most part, they simply ignored me. I was an inconvenience that they shuffled back and forth between them on the whim of the day.”
An image of Emily, smalland alone, scratched knees, and big, dark eyes taking up her whole face bloomed to life in Christian’s mind. If only they hadn’t been separated by a sea. If only they’d grown up in the same city, on the same block, they might have been able to give each other the comfort and security they had so desperately needed and longed for as children.
“I’m sorry, Emily.” The words seemed small and inadequatecompared to the sadness he felt for that little dark-eyed girl who’d only wanted what all little girls wanted: to be loved and cherished.
Nothing for you to be sorry about, her sad eyes told him. “It could have been worse,” she said aloud. “You know that because itwasworse for you.”
When it came to childhood trauma, Christian wasn’t one for splitting hairs. The young psyche experiencedhurt, uncertainty, and fear without really categorizing it. But that was a conversation for another day.
“And you?” he asked. “The third generation? As far as I know, you haven’t a string of ex-husbands trailing behind you.”
Emily’s mouth twisted into a moue of disgust. “I was gonna be different. I was gonna show ’em all that itwaspossible for a Scott to find a true love and make itstick. Ain’t nothin’ but mind over matter, you know?”
Once more, she’d donned her South Side ’hood-rat persona, wrapping the guise around herself like a suit of armor.
“I was careful all through high school, all through college. I never did what my friends did and told some hot jock that I loved him. I held those words dear. Told myself I was only gonna say ’em to one man. The one manI knew I’d spend the rest of my life with.”
When Christian swallowed, his throat felt sticky. What sorry wankstain had shoved a wad of peanut butter down his gullet? “Did you…say them to Neely?”
Her laugh was bitter. “See, that’s the thing. Iwantedto. When I first met him, I thought he hung the moon and stars. He was so smart and so handsome and so—”
“We’ve been through this already,”Christian cut her off. If he had to sit and listen to her sing Neely’s praises one more time, he might blow his bloody top. “He was amazing. I get it.”
“Hewas,” she insisted, making Christian grit his teeth. “He pampered me with gifts and attention, all the things I never got as a kid. And at first I ate it up with a spoon. There were so many times Iwantedto tell him I loved him, but Ididn’t. I held back because…it was too soon, or it wasn’t the right moment, or whatever. But then, about six months into the relationship, all his gifts and attention stopped making me feel loved and started making me feel sort of, well…suffocated.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “It wasn’t flowers every once in a while; it was flowers every week. For no reason. I think he wantedme to squeal and jump and clap my hands like I was as delighted by the twentieth bouquet as I had been by the first. When I didn’t, he got his feelings hurt. But maybe heshouldhave, right? Because he was being so thoughtful, and there I was…”
