Chapter Thirty-One
Emma
What had she done?
A half hour after her horrible confrontation with Pam—and the even worse moment when her mother had stumbled onto the conversation—Emma
still couldn’t quite believe the evening had played out so horribly.
One hell of a book club, she had to admit, as she helped load her grandmother back into her passenger seat.
When she had parked in this spot earlier in the evening, she never could have imagined that scene in the hallway with Pam
or that all the ghosts of the past would come pouring out, after all this time.
It was the worst possible luck that her mother happened to come down the hallway toward the powder room at that particular
instant.
If only Emma could have jumped back in time ten minutes, she would have waited to head for the bathroom herself until she
was certain Pam was nowhere in sight. The whole ugly mess could have been avoided.
“Okay, out with it,” Sylvia said bluntly when Emma climbed into the driver seat. “What the heck is going on? Your mother left
in a rush with her sexy author, and now you’re hustling us home like you just stuffed Barbara’s polished silver in your purse
and are trying to make a fast getaway.”
“No stolen silver,” she assured her grandmother. “I’m sorry if I dragged you away when you weren’t ready to leave yet. I just . . .
couldn’t stay.”
She started the car, hoping her grandmother would let the matter rest.
She should have known better.
“Something’s happened,” Sylvia said as Emma pulled out into the street.
She thought about denying it, but what was the point? Sylvia would find out eventually. Emma nodded, feeling tears burn as
she drove toward their house.
“The worst something,” she admitted. “Mom knows about Pam.”
“How did that happen?”
“She overheard me fighting with her. I thought we were being quiet, but Mom happened to stumble into the hallway where we
were busy having it out. And at the worst possible moment.”
“Finally!” Far from looking horrified, as she should, Sylvia looked relieved. “It was high time you told her the truth.”
“I didn’t want to tell her the truth. I never wanted her to know.”
“I know you didn’t. If you had followed my advice, you would have told her a long time ago.”
“Why? What possible benefit would come from Mom knowing Dad might have been having an affair and at the very least he was
making out with another woman an hour before he died?”
Sylvia was silent. When she spoke, her voice was quiet and filled with a compassion that made Emma want to cry.
“For a decade, my daughter has been grieving your dad like he was some kind of saint. Gary was a good man, don’t get me wrong.
But clearly he was human, too. He made mistakes. Maybe hearing the truth will finally help your mom move on.”
“And maybe it will only hurt her and cause a whole new kind of grief.”
“Maybe. That’s up to Rosie, I guess.”
“I wish I’d had a chance to tell her under better circumstances.”
“You’ve had ten years, honey. I’ve been trying to convince you to tell her since I found out myself.”
Emma had tried to keep the truth from everyone, including Sylvia. She hadn’t wanted to tell her grandmother either. Better
if she hadn’t. But one night about a year after her father died—a few months before she had run away for the final time—everything
had spilled out.
She had been hanging out at Orca Park with friends, drinking, smoking a little weed, when they’d been caught by the police.
She and her friends had been arrested, since they were all sixteen at the time. She could still remember the mortified fear.
As wild as she had been that last year, Emma had escaped any brushes with the law until that night. Knowing she couldn’t call
her mom to get her, in desperation she had reached out to her grandmother. Sylvia had rushed down to the station, of course.
Emma never would have expected anything else.
After they were back at Sylvia’s place, her grandmother had been supportive but blunt when she told Emma she needed to get
her act together or this wouldn’t be the last time she ended up in trouble with the law.
Emma remembered bursting into tears of humiliation and pain. As her grandmother held her, gently asking what was wrong, all
of Emma’s turmoil—the months of pain and guilt and grief—tumbled out. Before she quite realized she had done it, she was spilling
everything to Sylvia.
“I couldn’t tell her,” she said now to her grandmother, as she had said that night. “She was grieving Dad so hard, and I couldn’t make things worse for her. I had killed him. I couldn’t ruin his memory, too.”
Her grandmother made a small sound of disgust. “First of all, you did not kill your father. I’ve told you that more times
than I can count. It was an accident.”
Intellectually, she might know the accident hadn’t truly been her fault and that only sheer luck had saved her from dying
alongside her father in the wreck.
That didn’t ease the guilt that ate away at her like termites in a pine forest.
“Second, you keeping the truth from your mother has only driven a wedge between you that widens with each passing year. All
you’ve achieved by your silence is further pain on both sides.”
She closed her eyes, knowing the truth of her grandmother’s words.
“She’s never going to forgive me.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Sylvia’s voice was crisp and no-nonsense. “My daughter is a sharp woman. She will understand, if you
give her the chance.”
“You should have seen her face. She was devastated.”
“Of course she was. Pam, that two-faced bitch, has spent a decade wiggling her way into Rosie’s good graces, becoming indispensable
in the process. I tried to warn Rosie to be careful of her intentions, but my daughter didn’t listen to me when she was a
girl and she doesn’t listen to me now that she’s over forty. What is it about the women in our family not listening to their
mothers? I hope to God that pattern ends with you and Olive.”
Emma smiled, much to her surprise.
Her smile faded as they approached her mother’s house. The looming confrontation pressed in on her and she wanted desperately to drop her grandmother off, grab Olive and drive away.
She had spent ten years trying to escape. It was past time to face the past, no matter how difficult.
After driving to Sylvia’s cottage, she helped her grandmother into her house, despite the older woman’s insistence she didn’t
need a hand. After bidding her grandmother good-night, Emma kissed her cheek and headed for the main house, her nerves frayed
and her stomach in knots.
She caught Maya trotting down the front steps.
“Hi, Emma. Your mom already paid me.”
“Oh good. How did it go?”
She couldn’t even use the excuse of having to drive the babysitter home to avoid the conflict, since Maya had driven there
herself.
“We had tons of fun. Olive is adorable. She loved playing with filters on my phone. I’ll text you a few of the photos we took.”
“Thanks.”
“She went straight to bed when I told her it was time and she’s been sound asleep for about an hour.”
Emma had screwed up many things in her life. So far, Olive was turning into the very best thing she had ever managed to produce.
After thanking her again, she went slowly inside.
As she feared, Rosie was waiting for her, perched on the edge of the sofa.
Emma took her time taking off her rain jacket, hanging up her bag, removing her shoes, before finally facing her mom.
She gave an exaggerated yawn. “Well, It’s been a long day, and I’ve got to head to the bookstore early tomorrow, so I think I’m going to head straight for bed.”
It was worth a shot, anyway.
Rosie glared at her. “Oh no, you don’t. You can’t run away like that. That’s what you did last time, isn’t it? You ran away
because you didn’t want to talk to me about this.”
Emma shifted. “I ran away for a lot of reasons, Mom. This house had become a battleground. We were fighting about everything.
I hated your rules and you hated just about everything about me.”
She hadn’t meant to say the last part. The words slipped out, leaving her mother looking devastated.
“I did not hate anything about you. I loved you. You were . . . my everything.”
“I didn’t want to be your everything. I didn’t deserve it.”
Her mother stared at her, looking scrubbed raw with emotion. “Oh, Emma. I’m so sorry I wasn’t a better mother to you during
that time.”
“You were fine. I was a mess.”
“We were both a mess,” Rosie said. “But I was the grown-up. You were a child. I should have been able to put aside my grief
to support you. I wanted to but . . . everything I did with you seemed to be wrong.”
“I was impossible. I know I was. I’m sorry,” Emma said quietly.
“A wise friend recently reminded me that grief is like the ocean, some days calm, other days stormy and ugly. But in time,
you figure out how to navigate the waters.”
Emma nodded. She had spent far too long dog-paddling in place.
“Tell me about tonight. I know you don’t want to talk about it but I need to know. I only heard the tail end of that conversation.
I would like to hear all of it.”
Emma again fought the urge to escape up the stairs, to find the peace she always did with her daughter. She couldn’t. Not now. Rosie wanted to know the truth about that day.
Sylvia’s words rang in her ears. You keeping the truth from your mother has only driven a wedge between you that widens with each passing year. All you’ve achieved by
your silence is further pain on both sides.
“I don’t want to talk about it again,” she admitted. “I would rather forget the whole thing happened.”
Her mother gave her a look filled not with the anger she might have expected for her secrets but a compassion that made Emma
want to weep.
“You can’t forget, though. Can you?”
She shook her head, miserable at heart. She didn’t want to rehash the past with her mother, the past that had haunted her
for a decade.
“What happened?” Rosie pressed.
She released a breath, knowing the time for secrets was well and truly past. “I was early for our appointment to go driving