With All My Heart - Emilia Finn Page 0,43

passion. So much selflessness. Your kinda crazy is allowed. Because he loves you.” I bring her hand into my lap to study the beautiful wedding and engagement rings. “Bobby told me he was bringing a girl home. He told me you were special. He told me he could feel it in his heart.”

Her smile turns shaky. “He did?”

I twine our fingers together. “He really did. He told me your name, and I nearly had a heart attack. But before I could say anything, before I could even decide if I should say anything, he told me I had to be cool, because you were special, and you were afraid of me. You were afraid of moms, because yours was so awful. He begged me to never let on that he told me that, because he didn’t want you to get mad that he blabbed, but he made sure I knew, because he didn’t want me to screw it up for him.”

“She used to beat the crap out of me.”

My heart aches for an abused little girl. Ann-Marie’s fists weren’t reserved only for me. And they weren’t the result of a hormonal night or an isolated fit of rage. They came often, and they came especially for the little girl that had already begun growing that night Ann-Marie was in our apartment. “I know.”

“She was such a bitch.”

I laugh weakly. “But you’re all your daddy. Hard working. Loyal. Funny. Caring. Sweet. I hardly knew him; I saw him that one time at the races. Saw him again that night at Geo’s place. Saw her once or twice more over the years at the store, but we never caught up again. Bry told me a million times he wanted to make up with your dad, because family’s family, you know? And rumor had it, your daddy wanted to make up with us, because he wanted his friends back. But your mom wanted none of it, and there was nothing your dad would risk losing you over. Each time I saw her in the store – and it was only two or three times ever – she’d take your sweet little hand and yank you around and take off in the other direction.”

Her eyes soften with longing. “You knew me when I was little?”

“I didn’t know you. I saw you a time or two. You looked just like your daddy. But Bryan and I had our own family, jobs, house, we had our own stuff to take care of, so after a while, I just forgot about her. We didn’t know your mom died until after the fact.”

“The guys didn’t make up after she died?”

Emotion clogs in my throat. Memories of the worst day of my life flash in my mind and threaten to drag me under the way I couldn’t let them when it happened.

I had three young boys to take care of. A house to run.

The measly income I made from tutoring wouldn’t feed my family.

Bry took my heart with him to the grave, and I knew it, I knew it the moment it happened.

“They were going to.” I pull Evie and Bean onto the couch with us.

We’re four women that share the same last name, though not one of us share blood. We huddle on the couch and hold hands.

“Bry reached out to him. They were going to hang out for the first time in a long time, but he never got there.” I lean into Kit’s shoulder and bite my tongue. “I knew it the moment it happened. He wasn’t racing. He promised to never race again, and he kept that promise. But he was still in the car. It was just an accident.”

“He was on the way to see my dad when he died?” Her voice breaks with realization. “I didn’t know that.”

Bobby doesn’t know that. No one knows that.

It wasn’t an important detail to my sons at the time, and since I’ve never told my now-adult children I knew the Reilly’s, it’s never come up.

There are some people I blame for Bry’s accident, but not Kit, and not her dad.

“It was just an accident, honey. But somehow in all the chaos, he made sure we got you. He made sure I was set up. He made sure his family was okay. Then more than a decade later, you turned up on my doorstep with a beating heart in your eyes and your hand clutching to my son’s like he was your only tether to this world.”

“He kind