“Honey?” she calls to my father. “Chloe’s here!”
“What? My little lucky charm?”
I hear my father push out of his chair, then the string of cuss words follows, and I smile. I try to wipe my tears before he makes it into the foyer, but it’s pointless. The second he sees me, he knows something is wrong.
“What did that boy do to you?”
I huff out a laugh. “No, Dad. I promise. It wasn’t him. It was me.”
My mother puts her arm on my shoulder. “We’re going to go out back and talk. Bring us some iced tea, will you?”
Dad nods, not taking his eyes off me, and I bet he’s already thinking of a medicine he could create that would kill Callum in an instant. But it’s not my husband’s fault I’m crying. It’s my own, and that’s the exact reason I’m here.
My mother leads us out back, and I realize right away I was wrong about the house not changing. Instead of the old, rickety porch they had, there’s now a full patio complete with comfortable-looking rocking chairs and a table that has an umbrella poking out through the middle of it. There’s even a firepit, which is the most surprising of all, considering my parents never used to like building fires when we’d go camping.
We settle onto two chairs, but we don’t say anything right away. My mother just lets me sit there, taking it all in. I watch the clouds move across the sky and listen to the birds chirp without a care in the world. Dad brings us two teas, and I wish it were Diet Coke, but I take a drink anyway.
“So,” my mother says, rocking back in her chair, cupping her hands around her glass after he leaves. “I’m guessing you’re not here because you have good news.”
“Actually, I do. I got a job offer. A paper in Seattle is branching out and starting a second paper. They want me to be the editor-in-chief, and I plan to accept their offer.”
“What?” She grins. “That’s incredible, Chloe!”
She sounds genuinely happy for me, and I can’t help but be a little suspicious of her reaction. She pushed me to take the internship to get me away from Callum once. Is that what she wants to happen now? Is that whatIwant to happen now?
No.
“I’m proud of you, you know,” she says, and my jaw slackens.
“You…are?”
“Of course. Why do you seem so surprised by that?”
“Because it’s not biology. It has nothing to do with the degree you and Dad paid for. Because it would mean I stay in Seattle with Callum. I don’t know. A whole myriad of reasons.”
She flattens her lips. “I suppose that’s fair.” She takes another sip of her tea. “I don’t hate Callum, you know.”
“Mom…”
“No, let me get this out, okay?”
I sigh, then nod. “All right. Say your piece.”
“I don’t hate him, Chloe. That boy has been nothing but good to you, and if I did hate him, that really wouldn’t be fair. Yes, I pushed you into biology because it’s a much more stable career than writing. I felt you needed that. Plus, I knew how much you struggled in your studies except for with that. I thought it might be the safer choice, easier.” She taps her wedding ring against the glass. “I was wrong for doing that, but I was not wrong for pushing you to take that internship and sending you to London.”
I open my mouth to argue, to tell her if she hadn’t, maybe I wouldn’t be in this position with Callum now and we wouldn’t have lost three years of our marriage—but she holds her hand up to stop me, and I clamp my lips shut.
“I was married before your father.”
I shoot forward in my chair. “What?!”
“Shh!” she says, looking back into the house, where my father is focused on the news. He’s not paying us any attention at all. “Don’t be so loud.”
“Sorry.” I sit up straighter. “But what the hell do you mean you were married before? Does Dad know?”
“Of course he knows.” She leaves off theduh, but it’s still implied. “I tell your father everything.”
I snort. “But not your daughter.”
