keeping his arms wrapped tightly around her. “Ever since she’s been back, she’s been very quiet. I don’t know if something happened to her personally or if it was the whole experience, but something shook her to the core.”
“I’m sorry, Rory. I’m sorry for her and for you. I’m sure that’s very hard to watch and not be able to fix it.”
“She started talking to Tara, and I see Erin coming more and more back into herself. The whole family was worried, but she seems to have turned a corner and is a little happier now.”
They lay together in silence for several minutes, each to their own thoughts. She loved the feel of his embrace, his steady heartbeat under her cheek, his warm breath puffing against her forehead. She thought about how he described his family. Large. Loud. Loving. And could not help but draw comparisons to her own. Afraid to look him in the eye, she carefully said, “You’ve never asked about my real mom.”
His hand had been drifting over her shoulder but stopped for a few seconds before continuing on its path. “Babe, you can talk to me about your family whenever you want. But it needs to be in your time. Your way.”
She remained silent for another moment, gathering her thoughts. She rarely talked about her mother but trusted him and wanted Rory to know everything. “My mom left when I was six years old. She just packed her bags and left.” She swallowed deeply, then continued. “I spent years wondering what I’d done… or what Dad had done… or what made my mother walk away… what could possibly make any mother walk away. Then I felt angry that she could so easily turn her back on us. Now, it’s hard to feel much other than just sadness that she didn’t care enough to watch me grow up.”
His arm tightened around her, and she reveled in the warmth. “Babe.” The one word rumbled from his chest, but she felt it move through her, offering solace as well as sympathy.
“It’s hard for me to remember what life was like before she left. I know my dad worked a lot, but when he was home, I always felt like I had his attention. Looking back, I have no idea if he gave that same attention to her. And whenever we talked about her, which wasn’t often, he never gave me a good reason other than she felt trapped. I remember her painting. I remember watching her pretty drawings come to life. As I got older, I confess that I looked her up on social media, not sure if I wanted to find her or not. I discovered she was remarried to an artist and was living in San Francisco. No other children. I did happen to look at her husband’s social media bio and saw that he was originally from Hope City. My assumption, which I never talked about with my father, was that she’d met this man who appealed to her artistic, creative side and decided that she’d rather be with him than with us.”
Rory remained quiet, his fingers skimming along the skin of her arm and down her back before repeating their path. She took that as an encouragement to continue talking. “My dad came from money but still worked very hard to build his business. After Mom left, he threw himself into work even more. At least that’s how it seemed to a lonely six-year-old.”
“Is that when Martha came into the picture?”
A rueful chuckle slid out, and she shook her head, wrapping her arm around his waist as she held on tight. “No, she came along later. My grandmother moved in with us and was in charge of me for quite a few years.”
“Was that a bad thing?”
Thoughts swirled in her head, and she took several moments to figure out how to explain her grandmother to someone else. Shifting, she sat up, making sure the sheets still covered her breasts, not wanting to have a conversation about relatives while naked. Facing him, she scrunched her nose and shook her head. “No, Grandmother wasn’t bad, just different. She was like a grand dame—came from money and very set in her ways. I know she loved me, and I’m truly grateful that she stepped in when my mom left. It’s just she had very old-fashioned ideas of how a lady should behave and drilled those ideas into my head. I confess that I often still hear her words