23. Emily #2
“Are you actually blaming me for your affair right now?” I wipe my face hard, furious that I’m crying in front of her. “Every single time, every choice, you picked them. Henry. Carmen. Him. What about me? When in my whole life did you ever once pick me?”
She opens her mouth, and nothing comes out. She just looks annoyed that I asked.
“I’m done.” My voice is wrecked but it holds. “Go be Carmen’s mother. You always wanted to be. You were never really mine anyway.”
“Alright, that’s enough.” It’s Mrs. Potts, on her feet now, small and trembling, her teacup finally set aside.
Her voice shakes, but it doesn’t waver. “I don’t know you, ma’am, beyond what that girl’s told me and what you’ve shown me standing in my living room just now, and frankly that’s plenty.
Emily has sat at my table every week for months and never once had an unkind word for anybody, even the people who earned it.
And you come into my house and call her a mistake.
” She points at the door with one knobbly finger. “Get out. And don’t come back.”
It’s the most I’ve ever heard the woman say.
My mother stares at her like she’s been slapped.
She looks between the two of us, and whatever she sees in our faces finally lands, because she grabs her purse and goes, heels hard on the floor, the door slamming behind her hard enough to rattle the windows.
And then it’s just the two of us, and the quiet, and the cold tea.
Mrs. Potts comes and takes both my hands in her papery ones. “Your father,” she says, “loved you more than anything in this world. Whatever that woman is, you came from him too. Don’t you forget that part.”
It nearly takes me down, that. I hold it together by about a thread.
“I have to go,” I manage. “I’m sorry I brought all that into your living room.”
“Never apologize for somebody else.” She squeezes my hands. “Ever. You hear me?”
“I hear you.”
I get in my car and I drive. I make it three blocks before it hits me, all of it at once, and I have to pull over because I can’t see the road through it.
***
Richard’s in the kitchen when I get home, sleeves rolled up, doing something at the counter, and he takes one look at my face and everything else drops out of his hands.
He crosses the room and I walk straight into him, and that’s it, that’s all it takes, the whole thing comes apart.
I cry like I haven’t let myself cry in years, the ugly kind, shaking all over, making sounds I’d be embarrassed by if I had room left to be embarrassed, and he doesn’t try to fix it or shush me or ask me to explain.
He just holds me up, both arms around me, one hand on the back of my head, and he lets me fall apart against his chest for as long as it takes.
When I can breathe again, he pulls back just enough to look at my face. “Hey. What happened?”
“My mom.” It’s all I can get out at first. “She found me at Mrs. Potts’s. And I got it out of her, Richard. The thing that’s been wrong my whole life.”
“Okay.” He keeps his hands on my arms. “Tell me.”
“She’s been sleeping with Uncle John. Carmen’s dad.” I watch it hit him. “Since I was a kid. The whole time she was married to my dad. The whole time.”
“Jesus.”
“That’s why it was always Carmen.” My voice keeps cracking. “She wanted a kid with John. Carmen was the closest she got. And I was the one from the marriage she never wanted. Every time she looked at me she saw the wrong life.”
His arms come back around me, tight. “Em. None of that was ever about you.”
“I know that now. That’s almost the worst part.” I press my face into his shirt. “All those years I thought I was the problem. I wasn’t even in it.”
He doesn’t say anything clever. He just holds on and lets me breathe, and after a minute I make myself say the rest.
“There’s Ciara.” I pull back to look at him. “And here’s the thing. I don’t know if she knows any of it. The baby being Henry’s, John and my mom, any of it. Maybe she’s clueless. Maybe she’s known for years and never said, like everyone else.”
“You think she’s like your mother?”
“No. God, no, every part of me says she’s not.” I scrub at my face. “But I thought I knew my mom too. So I don’t know what I’m walking into. Either I wreck the life of a woman who did nothing, or I find out she’s been lying to me too. And I won’t know which till I’m looking at her face.”
He’s quiet, his thumb moving slow across my cheek. “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Part of me thinks it’s not even mine to tell.” I press the heels of my hands against my eyes. “But she’s been more of a mother to me than mine ever was. If she doesn’t know, she deserves to hear it from me. And if she does...” I trail off. “Then I need to see it on her face.”
“What does your gut say?”
I think about Ciara. The one who hugged me when my own mother went cold, who remembered I hate cilantro and made my plate separate without being asked.
Every instinct I have says she’s exactly what she looks like.
But my instincts have been wrong about my whole family my entire life, so I don’t fully trust them.
The only way to actually know is to sit in front of her, say it, and watch what her face does.
“I’m telling her,” I say. “If it blindsides her, she deserved the truth. If it doesn’t, I deserve to find that out. Either way I’m done being the only one who doesn’t know things.”
“Then you have your answer.” He tucks a piece of hair behind my ear. “You’ve spent your whole life cleaning up after these people, Em. Keeping the peace so nobody else has to feel bad. Stop. Let them deal with their own mess for once.”
Nobody’s ever told me that before. Not once. Every other person in my life wanted me quiet and easy and out of the way. He’s the first one who’s ever told me I’m allowed to stop.
“If she doesn’t know, this blows up her whole life,” I say quietly. “Her marriage. Carmen. All of it. And I’d be the one who did it to her.”
“You wouldn’t be doing anything to her.” He says it gently, but firm. “Your mother and John did this. Years ago. You’d just be telling her the truth. That’s not the same, and you know it.”
I do know it. That’s the worst part.
I lean into him, exhausted right down to the bone, and let him hold me up a little longer.
His heartbeat is slow and even under my ear, and I think about how many afternoons I spent in this exact spot, in Henry’s house, in Henry’s silences, certain I’d ruined my one shot at being loved by anyone.
And here I am in a different kitchen entirely, falling apart, and the man holding me isn’t counting my flaws or waiting for me to pull myself together so I can get back to being useful.
He’s just here. Letting me be a wreck. Holding the weight so I don’t have to for a minute.
“I love you,” I say.
“I love you too.” He kisses the top of my head. “Now come sit down. I’m going to make you tea. And then, when you’re ready, you can call Ciara.”
I let him steer me to a chair and put the kettle on.
The warm mug ends up in my hands, and I sit there holding it, staring at my phone on the table, dark and waiting, Ciara’s name buried somewhere in it.
And I know that the second I pick it up, the version of all our lives where nobody knows is over for good.
I let the tea go lukewarm before I reach for the phone.