Her mom frowned. “Why would it hurt my feelings?”
“Because I just …” Oh, she was really going to do this. Break the unspoken rule she and West had made all those years ago: to always pretend that everything was normal and fine. She couldn’t anymore. She needed answers. “You and Dad are really different. But you know that, right? That you’re different from other people?”
Her mom blinked. “I would hope so. Everyone is supposed to be different from other people. That’s what makes you special.”
Jessie smiled slightly. “Well. Yeah. But I mean … unconventional.”
“Yes. We are.” Mom was so unbothered.
Jessie wasn’t sure what reaction she wanted, honestly. So she decided to just ask about love.
“Does that make being in love easier or harder?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s like to be somebody else.”
“Okay.” Jessie almost laughed. Because her mother’s answers were so simple, and it was hard to believe it was that simple. To just not compare yourself. To just be as you were. “But I mean, when you were falling in love, did you have to fight for it? Did you feel there was a pattern you could follow, or did you feel you were starting from scratch? Did you … did you worry about losing him? Were you afraid for him to see all your collections? For him to seeyou.”
Jessie swallowed hard. “People don’t like me, Mom. Or they didn’t, not when I was little. They thought we were weird. And they thought I was weird. I got so tired of being rejected. I’m scared of being rejected again.”
Lucinda was silent for a long moment, and then she went over to her bookshelf and started touching the spines of the books. In a rhythmic pattern, sort of a soothing motion. “I was rejected all the time. But I never understood why I should hide myself. I wasn’t the one who was being mean or unkind. People didn’t like it when Italked too much about the things I enjoyed, but I thought they were boring. Why wouldn’t you want to talk about interesting things? But that doesn’t mean it didn’t hurt.”
Of course her mother had experienced a lifetime of rejection. Of course she had. Jessie had felt protective of her multiple times in the present, but she had never thought about what her mom’s life might’ve looked like in the past. She had never realized, not fully, that of course her mom had been a kid who was often alienated from the people around her.
“But how did you find the courage to tell Dad how you felt?”
“I couldn’t hide it. No other man was ever interested in me. But he liked the way I was. He never asked me to change. He never asked me to talk about different things. He likes things to move quickly, and he’s very brave—in ways that I’ve never been. He’s different from me, but I don’t need him to be different from himself. Just as he’s never needed me to be someone I wasn’t. But yes, telling him how I felt was scary.”
“Did you tell him first?”
She nodded. “Yes. I’ve never been very good at lying. And there was a point where I knew I wanted to be with him forever. So I thought I’d better just say it.”
“I’m just afraid. I love Flynn. I love Flynn, but I don’t know what he wants. I don’t know if he feels the same way. I don’t know … I don’t know. And I’m so worried that I’ll do the wrong thing and ruin it.”
“If it’s love, then saying the wrong thing won’t ruin it. It might be like a train that gets kicked off the tracks for a while. But it won’t be ruined.”
They were such simple words. And yet Jessie could feel a lot of wisdom in them. She and her mother weren’t exactly the same. Jessie had learned to hide herself. Jessie had learned to protect the woman she was in her deepest heart.
Her mom had never learned that. Instead, she had accepted rejection as an immutable part of life. Jessie wondered if in some ways her mother’s response was better.
Because the stakes felt so very high. Flynn was the first person to see her. He was the first person to really know her and like her.
She had given more of her real self to him than she had given to her family, and …
Maybe that was why it felt so frightening.
Because if he rejected her, it was the real her. The very real, very vulnerable Jessie Jane with her pink bedspread and her baked goods. With her squishy heart that just wanted to be accepted.
And maybe he should be the one to make the first move, except fundamentally, one of the reasons Jessie was so angry was that she felt she deserved to be accepted.
She didn’t know if Flynn believed that he did.
Her mom grabbed hold of a small, red book, then turned around and handed it to her. “I have a collection of old letters and diaries. This one belonged to our Belle. One of your ancestors. A prostitute.”
Jessie looked down at the book. “I know who she is.” She turned it over in her hands. “I didn’t know you had her diary.”
“You never asked.”
“I …” She looked down at the book and felt a tug of connection. “She must’ve been rejected a lot. People aren’t very nice to prostitutes.”
