Pam looked as if she wanted to cover her ears with her hands. Her gaze flitted down the hallway but Emma didn’t turn around, too busy finally,finallyspilling out all the ugliness of that day.
“He said it was only a harmless flirtation. Meaningless. You were lonely and he was flattered by your attention. He said he felt sorry for you, that he lost his head, but that it meant nothing and would never happen again.”
“Of course that’s what he said. He wasn’t going to tell the truth about what we felt for each other to his fifteen-year-old daughter.”
Wondering about that had haunted Emma for all these years. Had her dad been lying? Could his and Pam’s relationship have been deeper and more important to Gary than he claimed?
She would never know. She only knew that her father died that day but she had also lost her idealized image of him as a loving father and husband.
She felt shaky and sick and wished she had never started this, that she had turned back around and rushed away as soon as she saw Pam come out of the bathroom. The same way she had rushed away that day in the office when she had found them together, only to come back inside, this time making noise and calling out to alert them to her presence.
Pam made a move to rush past her but Emma had one more thing to say. She drew in a breath and faced this woman who had caused irreversible harm.
“Even if you were having an affair with him that had been going on for years under my mother’s nose, my dad loved us. He never in a million years would have left my mother for someone like you.”
“You keep telling yourself that, honey.”
“Wh-what?”
At the new voice from the end of the hallway, Emma turned and felt any blood remaining leave her face.
Rosie stood staring at both of them, her features pinched, haunted.
How much had her mother overheard? Her stomach roiled as every bite she had eaten that evening threatened to rise up again.
“Mom.”
“What are you saying?” Her mom was looking at Pam. “You and Gary had an affair?”
Pam said nothing, looking as if she would rather be anywhere else on earth.
“This isn’t the place or time for this, Mom. Let’s talk about it when we get home.”
“No. I want to talk about it now.”
Her mom was shaking, she saw. Emma stepped forward and would have taken Rosie’s arm but her mother held her hand out as if pushing away a tidal wave of pain.
“Gary wouldn’t have betrayed me. We... we loved each other since we were in high school.”
“People change,” Pam said tightly. “Their needs change and sometimes they no longer want the same things they did when they were teenagers. I used to love fruit-flavored bubble gum but then I grew out of it.”
Okay. Emmawasgoing to punch the bitch.
Rosie looked devastated, as if this entire beach house she had built for Barbara West had collapsed around her.
Emma narrowed her eyes at Pam. “And sometimes they realize what they want and need has been right in front of them the whole time and that everything else is a pathetic attempt to fill a void that didn’t need to be there in the first place.”
Pam gave her one last look of loathing and then pushed past both of them to return to the party. A moment later, she heard a door shut and assumed Pam had left.
Meanwhile, Rosie was staring at her out of eyes that looked bruised, betrayed.
“You knew about... about your dad and... her?”
Emma swallowed, closing her eyes. She had never wanted this day to come. She had hidden the truth for a decade, unable to truly grieve her father’s death properly because she was so full of anger toward him.
She could never accept her mother’s attempt to comfort her after Gary died because Emma was so afraid of Rosie finding out the truth.
“All this time, you knew and you didn’t say anything to me?” Rosie pressed.
