The Reunion (Love Stories From a Small Town #5)

19. For the Best

The last two decades of my life resulted from a pile of lies.

The mile or so it took me to drive home again wasn’t long enough to give me time to sort out what I just experienced, though.

More out of spite for the old bitch who told me I’d never be good enough more than anything, I excelled in college and built a successful career for myself. So, I guess I should thank Missus Vasser for showing me what I was really made of. But that the variables guiding my decisions back then had been so manipulated that I felt like I had no other choice made me want to bypass my house and go choke her for a minute.

Finding Dad going through his box of papers at the kitchen table, I closed the door behind me when he looked up. “You’re back quick. How’d it go?”

Setting my purse on the counter, I laughed back at him. “The whole thing was shocking, to be honest.” I set the keys on the wall hook and pulled out a chair across from him at the tiny white table as I stared him down. “But you’re not going to believe who I ran into, though.”

Dropping his eyes back to the box, he let the paper fall inside and slid it away. “Oh. I think I have a good idea.”

Puffing my cheeks, I shook my head at my fingers as they rubbed across my childhood drawings the magic eraser couldn’t scrub loose. “So...”

I spilled every detail of my talk with Missus Vasser before I broke up with Dom to my dad. So how he could let me go on believing Dom lived on the other side of the country when he was only three miles away all these years was something I wasn’t sure I could ever forgive. “Did he just reappear out of thin air one day? Or?”

He stopped his thumb twiddling long enough to jerk them both from his hands to shrug at me. “What was I going to do, Faith?” I rolled my eyes away to the window as he leaned closer, swaying sideways to catch my attention. “His mother had already set the wheels in motion, and you were already gone.”

Gently sighing from his nose, he seemed lost in the air for a moment. “Dom was such a mess, too. So, I didn’t see the point in hurting either of you even more with the truth.”

Missus Vasser’s fake smiles and syrupy, sweet Southern charm-laced Bible bullying still made my skin crawl, causing my shoulders to shudder back at him. “I can’t believe the woman hated me so much that she would make up such an elaborate damn plan. God, I was stupid to buy into any of it.”

Nodding back at me, he beat his fingernail onto the table. “You were in way over your head when it came to dealing with her. Yes.” He reached out for my hand and squeezed. “But that’s not your fault. She’s just a horrible human being who gets off on making people feel like garbage, and that’s not something a normal person does.”

Opening and closing his mouth, his fingers slid off me again. “I tried never to lie to either of you. But the whole thing was such a complicated minefield to navigate, I wasn’t sure how to lead any of us out of it.”

As he pinched up both his shoulders, he backed away and breathed out the guilt he’d been holding onto for so long. “I’m not trying to defend her in any way, Faith, but we all do what we think is in our children’s best interest, right or wrong.” Jerking the side of his mouth, he flipped his hand over. “For whatever reason, she thought you were wrong for him.”

When my mother left my dad, she took half his money and left me behind. To say I grew up poor was an understatement, and Missus Vasser never let me forget how pitiful I was with her ‘Bless your hearts’ and ‘They say God loves the working folks.’ “Yeah. I guess I dodged a bullet by not having her phony, meddling ass as a mother-in-law.”

Dominic was a thought that never left my mind, and seeing him again only stirred up things I feared I’d never feel again. I didn’t know if there’d be a future for us, but Dom would always be a friend of mine, and I was so angry about what happened to him, too. “But what about what she did to him? How can someone do that to a child they claim to love so much?”

Shaking his head back at me, he hooked his coffee cup with his finger and dragged it to him. “I can’t say what she was thinking. But if I thought for a second Dom would ruin your life, I may have done the same thing.”

The transformation of his once silky black hair to a coif of pale silver was complete, and it fell over as he sighed into his coffee. “I’m not proud, but it’s the truth. I wanted the best for you both, and I think it worked out for the best, despite how it came to be.”

How adults always assumed kids were their little puppets to do whatever they wanted with never made any sense to me. “What are you talking about?”

Like I didn’t have a thought or feeling of my own just because I was a teenager when it happened, he basically admitted he felt like nothing I went through affected me in any kind of negative way. “You two old fibbers did ruin my life. Nothing worked out the way I wanted it to.”

His forehead wrinkled back at me as he shifted his chin. “How’s that?”

A finger uncurled from his arm with everything Dom and I accomplished separately. “You graduated college at the top of your class. Have a boatload of cash socked away. Traveled the world. And Dom’s a well-respected doctor.” Bending his hand away to show me where I came from as he looked over his house, he arched his brows. “It doesn’t sound like either of you did too bad to me.”

Shaking my finger at him, I shoved my hips back to push out my chair. “To you, I bet it does sound good.”

My parents were already grown up and married with a home of their own by the time they had me. They chose to bring me into the disappointing lives they settled for. So when either of them hinted that anything held them back from a better future other than their own choices, it just infuriated me. “But I’m miserable — absolutely freaking miserable.”

I closed my eyes and caught the tears dripping from them with my fingers. “You may have wanted to go to school and travel the world. But it’s not what I wanted for my life.” I was so busy building a future from the nothing I started out with that I never made the time to actually chase the things that made me happy. “All I ever wanted was to be his wife and a mother, and you stole that from me.”

I lifted a finger from the table as I opened my eyes again. “I have no kids.” Another finger came up as I shook my head at him. “No husband.” My hands chopped away from each other. “No other family in this world except for you. And when you’re gone, I’ll have no one.” My palm met the center of the table as I leaned over to him. “So no, things have not worked out for the best, in my opinion.”

Pointing at him as I passed him, I stomped off to the hallway. Reduced to my teenage hissy fits, I yelled out to him from the stairs until I flung my door open. “I’m seeing Dom tonight. So, don’t wait up for me.”

I closed the door behind me, and the boy in the photograph seemed to smile a little brighter this time. Ready to face the world and the truth with Dom for once, I smiled back and blew him a kiss on my way to the closet. “See you soon, baby.”