Confessions from the Quilting Circle - Maisey Yates Page 0,63
it was easier. It was harder in new ways. People had stopped giving her sad looks at school, and she’d been grateful for that. But now it felt like everyone expected her to be normal.
“You didn’t get accepted?”
“I did,” she said. “But I—I can’t leave my mom.”
There wasn’t any indication by his facial expression that he had any idea why she felt she couldn’t leave her mom.
“My dad died,” she said. “Almost four months ago. The day I got the acceptance letter, actually. And she didn’t want me to leave, anyway. If I left her now—”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “That’s bullshit. You got accepted into your top school, and you’re not gonna go?”
She wished they had stuck to talking about TV. Not ages and the future and things like that.
“My dad’s dead,” she reiterated.
Because as far as she was concerned, it was the answer to any question he might have.
“Yeah, and forgive me for sounding kind of callous, but that’s not likely to change anytime soon.”
His words probably should have offended her, but they didn’t. Instead, they made a strange kind of sense. “No. But there will be more time in between what happened then—”
“And in that time your mom will never learn to not need you. Sometimes you have to take opportunities when you get them.”
“Yeah, and when have you had to do that?”
“I’m still here. My dad’s dead, too. He drank himself to death. So no one was exactly making a saint out of him and acting sorry he was gone. And it’s been a long time. But my mom met some other guy, and she went off and had a couple more kids.”
She tried to imagine her mom with someone else and...couldn’t. “That must have been hard.”
“Yeah...” He lifted a shoulder. “I was seventeen. That kind of sucked. But I didn’t want to go, because Dusty promised me this place. He doesn’t have a son, and no one else to leave this place to, but he’s willing to leave it to me.”
Her age. He had been her age when his mother had left him. “I can’t imagine that. Being left on your own...”
“There wasn’t going to be anything for me where she went. I’m smart enough to know that people like me don’t get those chances too often. I’ve been here working with Dusty for the last four years. That’s my version of college, anyway. The best school I got accepted at.”
“You’re brave,” she said. “To stay on your own like that.”
“I don’t know. I did what made sense. So what about you? You were smart and you got the grades to get into the school. And you just don’t get to?”
“I lied to my mom. I told her that I didn’t get in.”
“Wow,” he said. “Because you know she would have told you to go if you did get accepted.”
“Or she would have asked me not to,” Emma said. “I don’t know. I just needed to deal with it on my own. And I meant to tell her the truth...but I just didn’t.”
“Hey. I don’t know what it’s like to have people care where I am. Maybe I’m off base. But you should go. You should go because you deserve to have what you want. If I could have gone to school to be a mechanic, I could’ve gotten all kinds of certifications and gotten a lot further. As it is, I’m self-taught on a whole lot of things that Dusty doesn’t know, and when I take over the place, I’ll be able to take on different business. But working toward certifications is going to be slow. If I would’ve had the chance to go to school... I would have.”
“I’m going to school. Just three hours away instead of a country away.”
“But it’s not what you want. Don’t you think that you’re worth it?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You’re concerned about your mom’s feelings, and that’s nice. But don’t you think that your feelings matter?”
“Yeah,” she said. “Of course they do.”
“I don’t think you’re giving them enough weight,” he said. “Just my opinion, as a guy who had to ask how old you were a few minutes ago.”
She laughed. They finished eating and moved on to lighter subjects, and by the time she had finished her hamburger, she was 100 percent convinced that he was the most wonderful guy she’d ever known.
He was like a light that illuminated the center of the room. Pushed the darkness into the corners. It was still there. But it wasn’t