62. Emma
Chapter Sixty-Two
EMMA
“ M ommy, are you still mad at Mama-Grandma?” Stella asked.
Emma jerked, studying her daughter in the dim light of the cramped pantry. “What? No. I’m not mad.”
“Then we aren’t hiding from her?” Stella asked, blinking those impossibly long lashes at her.
The conjoined Mama-Grandma wasn’t a mistake. Stella had started calling Mariana that last night and Garrett had encouraged Emma to embrace it.
“The situation is complex and she’s only five,” he said. “As long as you’re not hurt, I don’t think there’s any harm in it. Stella will get it all sorted out in her head once she gets used to us as parents.”
Emma had agreed, assuring him it didn’t bother her. But secretly her stomach had nose-dived to her knees. Because she was Mama-Emma now.
Motherhood had hit her like that moment of free fall when the coaster dropped.
Emma had done her best to be a supportive and loving sister in the past few years. But once she moved to San Diego, she’d been so wrapped up in her own life, trying to establish some semblance of independence .
The fact that she’d diligently video-chatted with Stella every week didn’t seem like enough. Not now that she knew the truth.
A little hand crept into hers. “Are you sure we’re not hiding?”
Emma sat on the upturned bucket Mariana used as a stool, pulling Stella into her arms.
“Well, maybe we are a little,” she admitted. “It’s just that Mariana, Mama-Grandma, keeps apologizing for not telling me about you.”
Emma kissed her forehead, taking a deep sniff to draw her baby’s scent deep into her lungs. “I want you to know that I would never have left you if I’d known you were my baby.”
Stella put her little hands on her cheeks. “It’s okay, Mama-Emma. Papa said it would have been superhard to be a normal mama with your broken head.”
Blinking back tears, she smiled at Stella. “That’s true. But I would have tried. Because I will always choose you. Always .”
Stella widened her eyes. “But you had to go so you could find Papa! So he could come and be my papa. And I’m glad he’s my papa! He’s the bestest!”
Emma bit her lip, mentally counting all the papas. She rubbed her cheeks against her daughter’s baby-soft hands before pressing kisses all over them. “You’re right. He is the bestest. And you’re going to love his apartment. It’s bigger than this house.”
Like four or five times bigger.
Stella tilted her head, pursing her rosebud lips. “Will I like my room?”
“Yes!”
Emma pictured the bedroom she’d slept in when she first moved in with Garrett. Stella probably wouldn’t like sleeping right across the hall when she was a teenager, but for now, they wanted her close.
“We’re going to get all new furniture for it,” she promised. “And lots of new clothes. It's warmer in San Diego but still gets chilly by the water.”
Stella’s eyes lit up. “Can we go to the store to pick a new bed?”
Somehow, Emma doubted there was a store Garrett would consider good enough for his baby girl .
“We’ll find one with the best things. And if you don’t see something perfect, we’ll find someone to make it.”
Knowing him, Garrett would have a list of bespoke carpenters on file.
Stella squealed, excited. They left the pantry, chattering about pink beds and princess sheets.
Emma pulled out her phone and showed her different styles and decoration ideas until Stella got sleepy and went down for a nap.
Hovering over her sleeping daughter, she pressed one last kiss to her little hand before forcing herself to stop.
There would be time for kisses later. For now, there was something else she had to do.
Stella had picked up on her reluctance to speak to Mariana. That wasn’t good. Emma was going to have to start untangling the knot of emotions choking her every time she thought about how long Mariana had kept her in the dark. For all their sakes.
Bracing herself, she found Mariana upstairs in her bedroom, packing up her things. Clearing her throat, she waited until her mother turned around, her hands full of shoes.
“You know Garrett offered to hire movers. You don’t have to lift a finger.”
Mariana gave her a tight smile. “I want to sort things myself. Most things I’d like to get rid of or donate.”
They stared at each other, both seemingly at a loss as to how to go on from here.
“Want some help?”
Mariana nodded, some of the tightness of her muscles easing.
They hadn’t been alone since the big revelation. Garrett had given them privacy to speak, of course, but he’d still been in the house, just a few rooms away. And it wasn’t that her mother hadn’t explained. Mariana had told her everything last night after Stella went to bed, going over the entire situation in halting words, along with her rationale for not telling her the truth.
Her mother had genuinely feared that her pregnancy had been the reason she’d been run down. She had been picturing an affair with a married man, someone determined to get rid of the evidence of his indiscretion at any cost.
Emma didn’t need to speculate on why her mother’s brain went there. If she was being honest, she wasn’t mad about it.
If someone had asked her which was more likely—an affair with a married man or one with a handsome eligible billionaire, she would have ticked the box next to married man as well.
There was also the fact Emma hadn’t been capable of caring for herself, let alone a baby. She knew that in her head. It was just harder to tell that to her heart.
Emma had never felt so mixed up. Her emotions were like a hurricane with her at the epicenter. If she stepped out of the calm center, she could be swept away, smashed against the nearest hard surface.
Emma pictured her skull cracking against a concrete wall, the image so clear and real.
Yeah, she might not remember the accident, but somewhere in the recesses of her brain, there was an echo of it. Maybe it was encoded in her cells now, imprinted by the car that hit her like an unexpected dose of radioactivity mutating her DNA.
Shaking off that morbid thought, she refocused on her task, lifting various items of clothing and knickknacks so her mom could vote and veto, sorting them into three piles: going to San Diego, going to Goodwill, and going to the trash.
“There’s nothing you want to set aside for friends?” she asked when the Goodwill pile threatened to topple over.
“Not too many of those,” Mariana said matter-of-factly. “None of the women around here would want this stuff anyway.”
She wanted to ask why but Emma kept her mouth shut, merely nodding and continuing to sort as if her life depended on it.
They made excellent headway. It helped that they didn’t have to worry about the furniture. Except for a few pieces, most of it would stay with the house as it had come furnished. It would stay on for the next tenant.
She and her mother had finished clearing the closet when the sound of a car engine roaring up the drive drew her to the window. Emma had been expecting Garrett, not the sheriff he’d gone out to meet.
Sheriff Warner had come out to see her a few times before she moved to San Diego. He would check in periodically, in case she remembered anything about the accident.
She had thought it odd in the beginning. The visits never lasted more than a few minutes—a bit of small talk followed by a few questions that could have easily been asked over the phone.
There had been that weird tension she couldn’t decipher every time Mariana and Jesse had been in the same room together.
Emma quickly realized those visits hadn’t been about her.
But while Mariana later admitted to a past relationship with the younger man, she never went out with him again. She never even called him by his real name, always referring to him by his title.
Emma had been afraid to ask what happened between them.
“It’s the sheriff,” she warned.
Mariana’s face went blank. Emma made a motion to go to the door, but her mother stood and brushed off her hands. “I’ll go see what he wants.”