Total pages in book: 180
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 176012 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 880(@200wpm)___ 704(@250wpm)___ 587(@300wpm)
Madeline, my dad’s ex, tenses. “No, I’ve got it.”
“It’s okay.” My mom walks backward, leading the table out of the room.
But Madeline drops her end, snapping, “Katherine, please.”
I narrow my eyes. Madoc’s mom has always been nice to me. Why is she being mean?
My mom freezes, her expression timid. She looks like Jared, a little. And like me when I don’t know what to say. We all have the same eyes. Brown, like chocolate, is what everyone says.
My blonde hair is my dad’s, though.
I curl my fingers into a wooden beam. I don’t like Madoc’s mom talking to mine like that. Madeline didn’t yell, but she sounded like my brothers when they’re scolding their kids.
My dad appears in my view. Dust covers his khakis, and there are green paint marks on his white T-shirt. He doesn’t say anything to his first wife, cupping my mother’s face, instead, and looking at her softly. His fingers thread through the wisps of long dark hair that’ve escaped her messy bun.
I lean down more, watching carefully. I’m not supposed to know why my dad’s first wife doesn’t get along with my mom, but I do.
My mother pulls back from my father. “I’ll see what they’re doing in the kitchen,” she tells him, trembling.
My mom leaves the small room—once a little old library, I think—and my dad turns to his first wife. “It’s been years—decades,” he points out. “How long are you going to make her pay?”
“I’m not trying to hurt her,” Madeline tells him. “But we’ll never be okay.”
My mom was my dad’s mistress. For a very long time, I think.
Madoc’s mom, while kind to me, doesn’t visit much. She lives in New Orleans with her husband, and Madoc and his family go there to visit most of the time. They even took me once.
My dad lowers his voice. “It’s me you should be mad at.”
“I am.”
My father steps closer. “She was young.”
“And then she wasn’t,” Madeline replies quickly.
There’s a five- or six-year age difference between my parents. He was in his twenties and already married with a kid. My mom was a teenager with a baby of her own. It’s weird to me that someone hates them, but I love that my dad only worries about someone hating my mother. It hurts him to see.
Madeline sighs. “I’m not going to get into this with you.” She squares her shoulders. “You’re married, you’ve been married for fifteen years, and I know you’re happy. So am I,” she tells him before dropping her voice to almost a whisper. “But I can still feel it, you know?”
I tilt my ear to the peephole.
“Being forgotten,” she goes on. “The nights I was alone, knowing where you were, and wondering what the hell was wrong with me that you kept running to her.” Her tone grows harder. “And it doesn’t change the pain that your daughter is beautiful and kind and Madoc adores her, but she’s going to get you at your best when he got you at your worst,” she growls, a sob thickening her voice.
I want to defend my dad. And my mom. They’re good parents and good grandparents and they don’t do anything wrong.
“All that pain because you couldn’t stop fucking her,” Madoc’s mom says.
I wince.
She continues, “You don’t get to demand that I forget simply because you perceive that an acceptable amount of time has passed.”
My dad drops his eyes and part of me understands the sadness on his face. I guess I’d be mad if I were her and it were my husband.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers.
“Would you have done anything differently?”
He doesn’t say anything at first. Maybe he’ll say he shouldn’t have married Madeline in the first place. I mean, if he didn’t love her, then…
But instead, he says, “I would’ve…left you sooner.”
I flit my eyes to Madoc’s mom, and it’s brief, but I see it. The flinch.
He would’ve still married her.
To get Madoc.
I can’t help but wonder what their wedding day was like. Celebration and laughter and dancing. Does it hurt her how much she hates him now? Could that happen to my brothers and their wives? Could it happen to me someday?
She leaves the room, and my father barely has time to run his fingers through his hair before Jared’s wife Tate walks in. “Can I help?” she chirps.
He flexes his jaw, struggling to find his words. After a moment, he exhales and forces a smile. “Thanks.”
They pick up the table and move it out of the room.
I watch them disappear from view and inhale though my nose as if pushing everything I just heard down into my stomach. Hiding it away. Keeping it to myself.
I don’t know why. Maybe because no one talks to me about the past. They don’t want me to know things.
Maybe it just feels good to know more than the other kids. Everyone acts like I don’t have a clue because I’m quieter than they are.