Chapter 45
CHAPTER
FORTY-FIVE
Emelia
When I first open my eyes, it takes me a moment to get my bearings, which is weird because I’m in my condo in Boston. This should feel like home.
But when I arrived yesterday and first stepped into the place, it felt anything but.
There was no little girl running up to greet me and wrapping her arms around me.
There wasn’t the hottest man alive who saves his smiles just for me, standing across the room and looking like he wanted to undress me. Slowly.
There was just a dim room and the noise of a bustling city outside, rather than the chirping of birds and the sound of the wind through the trees.
Maybe I did the wrong thing running away. Probably. But I couldn’t stand to face Elliott after he confessed his feelings to me, knowing what I know. That age-old urge to bolt rose up inside me, and I ran with it—literally.
Except before, running always felt like a relief, like freedom. But it doesn’t anymore. At least not when I’m running from Elliott and Baylor.
I want to tell Elliott everything, but I’m scared of his reaction. What if he doesn’t believe me? What if he thinks this was all part of some master plan? That I’m not good enough for him or his daughter? That what he thought of me to begin with was correct?
My plan today is to go into the office and gather the evidence I need to prove that the developer I’m working for has ulterior motives.
Not that I think the people of Echo Lake won’t believe me, but I want to prove my innocence—that I had no idea what was going on.
And there are documents I can only access in the office to do so.
There’s something else I need to do while I’m there too. As difficult as it is to do, it’s the right thing.
My phone rings from my nightstand, and I pull it off the charger and look at the screen. It’s my mom.
“Pretty early there for you to be calling me, isn’t it?”
I hear her blow out a breath. “Your father has this new thing he’s trying every morning. He’s making protein smoothies, and I think he found the loudest blender imaginable to do it. Wakes me up every morning.”
Even though she’s complaining about my dad, I can still hear the love in her voice.
I’m able to muster up a chuckle. “Sounds like you need to sleep with earplugs.”
“I already do. You have no idea how much your dad snores now.”
Something about hearing my mom’s voice through the phone brings tears to my eyes, and I have to press my lips together to keep them from falling.
“Sweetheart, what’s going on?”
“Why do you think something’s going on?” Even I can hear the watery note to my voice. I hit the button on my screen to change our call to speakerphone and toss it gently on the mattress beside me.
“A mother knows when something is wrong with one of her children, even when they don’t want her to. Now, what’s going on?”
The tears come then. Everything I’ve been holding back. All the emotions I’ve been trying to keep on lockdown since I put Echo Lake in my rearview mirror.
“I think I made a mistake.” Lying flat on my back and staring up at the ceiling, I rub the heels of my hands on my eyes in an attempt to stem the tears.
“Start at the beginning.”
“I fell in love with my landlord and his daughter.”
There’s a slight pause before my mom speaks. “That sounds like the end, sweetheart.”
A half sob, half laugh leaves my mouth.
“Now tell me all of it so I can help.”
And I do. She listens without interrupting as I tell her about Elliott and the kind of man he is and why I fell for him.
As I tell her about Baylor and what a ray of sunshine she is in my life.
About Kate and how I felt seeing her at the kitchen table with the two of them.
And finally, about my job, and how guilty I feel for being a part of a plan to damage the town, even if I didn’t know it.
“Well, that’s certainly a lot.”
“I know what I have to do. I have to expose my employer for what they’re doing before it’s too late. But what if Elliott feels differently about me after he finds out?”
“If he’s the kind of man you just described to me, that’s not going to happen.”
A big part of me thinks she’s right. But there’s always a chance that his demons get in the way too. The same way mine ran me out of town and back to Boston.
“It just feels like I have so much to lose, Mom. I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. Never felt like I fit the way that I do in Echo Lake with Elliott and Baylor.”
“Oh, honey…I don’t know if I’ve ever told you this before, but there was a time that I assumed the worst about your father too, as far as how he felt about me.”
“You did?” I roll over onto my side to face the phone and tuck my hands under my cheek.
“Yup. And I bolted too. Wanted to avoid the inevitable confrontation that I was sure was coming, where he’d tell me I wasn’t it for him.”
I find it so hard to picture. My parents have always been so in sync and happy together. My dad practically worships the ground my mom walks on.
“What happened?”
“Your dad made it clear that I was wrong. But what matters the most is what I realized after the whole situation had passed.”
“What’s that?”
“That what I was afraid of had more to do with how I felt about myself and my own fear of not being lovable than it ever did about your dad.”
I’ve only ever seen my mom cry a handful of times in my life, but I would bet that if I were on FaceTime with her right now that there would be tears in her eyes. I can hear it in her voice.
The truth of her words hits me square in the chest. “I think I’m afraid he’s going to realize that I don’t really fit. That this whole thing with the developer will make him figure it out.” I press my lips together and swallow past the rock currently lodged in my throat.
“I know it’s scary. But from everything you said, it sounds like Elliott deserves the benefit of the doubt. Give him the opportunity to prove to you that you fit, Em. If I were a betting woman, I’d put money on the fact that you’re the missing puzzle piece in his and Baylor’s lives.”
I squeeze my eyes shut and picture Elliott and Baylor, the three of us together. A family. “I want to, but I’m scared, Mom.”
“Then do it scared. Sometimes you just have to do it scared.”
I let the silence hang between us for a minute while I take in her words, let them permeate through my skin.
She’s right. She’s totally right.
It might be scary, and it might not end up how I want it to, but I have to give Elliott the chance to prove to me that he’s the man I think he is. And I need to prove to him that I’m the woman for him first. I need to prove to everyone in Echo Lake that is where I belong.