Chapter 36
Emmaline
In the two weeks since I’d visited my brother, I’d been on edge, looking for shadows around every corner, jumping at the slightest unexpected sound.
Nothing had happened, and that made me even more paranoid.
The waiting was worse than any direct confrontation.
Subtle wasn’t exactly in Marla’s or Karen’s wheelhouses.
But maybe they’d already done what they set out to do with the photos they’d taken.
What more could they hope to gain by continuing down the same path?
Wesley’s parole hearing was tomorrow. I didn’t know whether they planned to attend, but I’d braced myself for a confrontation. Once we found out whether he’d be granted release, then I’d worry about the best way to repair things with my brother.
No matter what Marla and Karen thought, what schemes they were hatching, Bodie and I were legally married.
We’d fulfilled the condition of Gran’s will, dotted every i and crossed every t.
The certificate was filed at the courthouse, our names linked in black ink and official stamps.
They weren’t getting their hands on the bakery, not now, not ever.
So, I’d half-convinced myself the crawling sensation between my shoulder blades as I closed up early, after another sell-out, was only nerves, not fact.
The air was starting to show the first bare hints of coming autumn.
But when I turned the corner onto Main Street and spotted my mother lingering half-hidden behind the hardware store sign, pretending to study the seasonal display of rust-colored mums and hay bales stacked out front, my stomach lurched hard enough to make me stumble.
She was trying to look casual, arms crossed like she was just another shopper admiring the fall decorations.
But I knew that posture, the way she held her shoulders when she was plotting something.
The way her eyes tracked my movement in the window reflection even as she kept her head turned toward the display.
Adrenaline and temper spiked sharp enough to make my fingertips tingle, heat flooding my chest despite the cool air. My paranoia wasn’t paranoia at all. She really had been following me, watching me, waiting for… what? The perfect moment to strike?
Before I talked myself out of it, before the rational part of my brain whispered about making a scene in broad daylight, I spun on my heel.
My shoes scraped against the sidewalk as I closed the distance between us and caught her by the arm.
Her sleeve was softer than expected under my grip, some expensive fabric that reminded me she’d always had a taste for things slightly beyond her means.
“Enough,” I hissed, steering her into the narrow alley alongside Cooley’s Hardware. The space smelled like old brick and motor oil, shadowed and private enough that no one would overhear us. “You’ve been following me for weeks. What the hell do you want?”
Marla shook me off with a sharp jerk and had the audacity to laugh—a sound that was more blade than breath, cutting and cold.
“What I’ve always wanted, sweetheart.” She smoothed down her sleeve where I’d grabbed her, like my touch had somehow contaminated the fabric.
“For you to stop pretending you’re something you’re not. ”
My pulse roared in my ears, but I forced steel into my spine, pulling every ounce of strength I’d learned to summon over the years.
I was done bowing to her emotional manipulation, done being the scared little girl who’d jump through hoops for even the smallest scrap of maternal approval.
“You can quit whatever game you’re playing with Wesley.
He’s not going to turn against me. I won’t let you use him like that. ”
That earned me a smile sharp enough to cut glass, the kind of expression that had always preceded her most devastating attacks.
“Oh, sugar.” The endearment dripped with false sweetness, poison wrapped in silk.
“He already has.” Her satisfaction gleamed like oil on water, dark and slick and impossible to clean away.
“You should’ve heard the things he said to me during my last visit, the way he talked about you.
You really think all those pretty visits of yours, all that sisterly devotion, make a difference?
You’re living in a fantasy if you think he doesn’t resent every single thing about your perfect little life. ”
The sting of truth in her words—the echoes of Wesley’s last bitter accusations about me abandoning him, about choosing the Gibsons over my own blood—sliced me open like a scalpel finding the exact spot where the old wounds had never quite healed.
But Marla didn’t stop there. She never did.
She leaned in closer, close enough that the floral, cloying scent of her perfume hit me, making my stomach turn.
Her voice dropped low and intimate, like a secret only I was cursed to hear.
“If your grandmother thought you were worthy, Emmaline, she would’ve left you the bakery free and clear.
No hoops to jump through, no ridiculous stipulations about marriage and respectability.
But she didn’t, did she?” She paused, letting that sink in like acid eating through metal.
“That will was her message to all of us, loud and clear. You aren’t enough on your own. Never have been, never will be.”
The words landed like a fist to the sternum, driving all the air from my lungs in one brutal rush.
For a second, my brain couldn’t translate the words, only the feeling of them—hot, acidic, spreading from my chest out to my fingertips.
It was the same old chemical cocktail I’d known since I was a kid: shame first, then panic, then the hollow drop of of course she’s right.
My body knew the steps long before my head could argue.
I told myself that however misguided Gran’s marriage clause had been, she’d meant well.
I’d said it so many times it almost sounded true.
Maybe she’d thought I needed a partner to help shoulder the burden of running a business, or maybe she’d just wanted to see me settled and happy.
But the longer I stood there, the louder the other voice got—the one that sounded like every version of my mother I’d ever tried to outrun.
If you were worth trusting, no one would’ve needed paperwork to keep you.
“She wanted to protect the business,” I managed, though my voice cracked like thin ice giving way under pressure. “She wanted to make sure it stayed strong.”
“She wanted to make sure you failed.” Marla’s lip curled in disgust, as if the very sight of me was offensive.
“And she would’ve been right, if not for you latching onto a Gibson like some kind of desperate parasite.
You think Bodie married you for love?” She let the word drip like poison, each syllable calculated to wound.
“No, sweetheart. He did it to soothe his guilty conscience about putting your brother away. And when that guilt runs out—and it will—so will he.”
I opened my mouth to argue, to defend what Bodie and I had built together, but nothing came out. The words were trapped somewhere behind the sudden tightness in my throat, smothered by the weight of too many wounds delivered in too few sentences.
Marla straightened, smoothed her blouse like she’d won some invisible battle, and gave me one last razor-sharp smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Keep playing house if you want, honey. But don’t say I didn’t warn you when it all comes crashing down.”
Then she walked away, heels clicking sharp and triumphant against the pavement, leaving me shaking in the shadows with her words echoing in my skull like a curse I couldn’t shake.
If your grandmother thought you were worthy, Emmaline, she would’ve left you the bakery free and clear. The echo dug under my skin, burrowing into the tender places I usually managed to keep locked away, sticking like burrs that refused to be pulled free.
I pressed a hand to the brick wall, fingers scraping against the rough surface as I steadied myself.
The alley seemed to sway around me, shadows shifting and dancing at the edges of my vision.
My chest ached with that old, familiar hollowness, as if someone had reached in and scooped out everything that might make me worthy, leaving me running on nothing but scraps and stubborn determination.
I hated that she still had the power to do this to me after all these years.
That after all the therapy sessions and all the careful distance I’d tried to maintain, a handful of carefully chosen words could still strip me bare and leave me bleeding.
I dragged in a shaky breath, tasting dust and motor oil, and forced myself to straighten. I wasn’t going to fall apart in a filthy alley, not where she’d been smirking at me with that satisfied gleam in her eyes.
But once I stepped back onto Main Street, the afternoon sunlight was too bright and harsh after the shadows.
I didn’t know where to go. Home would be too empty, too quiet, full of spaces that would echo with Marla’s poison.
The bakery would be too exposed, too public, where anyone could walk in and see the cracks she’d just torn open.
My chest ached like it was full of shattered glass, each inhale scraping me raw from the inside out. The familiar shops and faces around me blurred together, everything seeming distant and unreal.
And then my mind turned, as it always did now, to Bodie.
To the steady weight of his hand at the small of my back when we walked through town together, the way it grounded me when everything else felt like it was spinning out of control.
To the way his voice went low and gentle when he said my name, like it was worth something precious instead of just another burden to bear.
To the way I could finally sleep when he was close, my body believing in safety even when my head couldn’t quite catch up.