had placed their orders with their waitress—a beer for him and a white wine for her—she folded her slim hands on the table and gazed at him.
“I’m sorry for staring,” she apologized after an awkward silence. “It’s just that... It’s been a long time. I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve been in the same town, at the same address all this time,” he said brusquely. “If you missed me so much, you knew where to find me.”
“I deserve that,” she whispered, hooking a strand of hair behind her ear. “There’s so much I want to say to you...” She cleared her throat, momentarily dropping her eyes to the table before lifting them to him. “Will you hear me out? Please? And at the end if you still want to walk out of here and have nothing to do with me, then I’ll understand.”
“Fine.” He leaned back in his chair as the waitress set their drinks on the table. Twisting the cap off his beer, he tipped it toward her. “I’m listening.”
“Thank you.” Her inhale of breath echoed between them, as did the long exhale. “I want to preface this by saying I’m not excusing my absence from your life. I just want to explain my side of it and hope that maybe you can forgive me.”
She sipped from her wineglass. For courage? Because that was the reason he gulped down his beer. To try to bolster the bravado to sit here and listen to his mother explain why he hadn’t been important enough for her to stay in his life.
“I married your father when I was young—nineteen. Like a fairy tale, he whisked me away to this beautiful home, provided a life I’d only dreamed about. I guess you could say Rusty pampered me, because he did. Beautiful children, a home, clothes, jewelry, cars, vacations abroad—everything I could ever ask for. Except for a faithful husband.”
She lifted her glass for another sip, this one a little longer than her last. And when she lowered her arm, her slim fingers slightly trembled around the long stem.
“I couldn’t stay in a loveless marriage any longer,” she continued, her voice a shade huskier. “Not when I walked in on Rusty with another woman. Asking him for a divorce was terrifying, but at least I had you and your sister. Or at least, I naively believed. As punishment for daring to leave him, Rusty used all his power, including a judge who knew him, to ensure he got custody of you and Gina. I might have received a financial settlement, but what mattered most to me—my children—I lost.”
Ross tried to steel his heart against her tale; he’d heard some of it through Rusty. But the cheating, the judge in Rusty’s pocket? No, his father had left those details out. Not that either shocked him. When Rusty played to win, he refused to lose at all costs.
Still, she’d left his father. Why had she then divorced her children?
As if she read his mind, she continued, her voice low, pained, “I tried to maintain a relationship with you and Gina. God, I tried. But you two were growing older and preferred to be with your friends rather than a woman who was increasingly becoming a stranger to you. I got it. And Rusty didn’t help matters, either. He didn’t try to enforce our custody arrangement. Then I couldn’t find work here in Royal, and everyone treated me like the scorned ex-wife. I had to leave town simply to survive.”
As someone who’d recently been on the receiving end of Rusty’s hardhanded tactics, an unprecedented empathy he’d never offered his mother swelled within him. He understood survival.
He understood trying to escape the steel, booby-trapped box Rusty could trap a person in.
“Now, in hindsight, I wish I’d fought harder to get you back. To try another court if one didn’t listen. The Edmond name and power extends beyond Royal, and I didn’t have the financial resources to fight. But if I’d known divorcing him would mean losing you and your sister, I would’ve stayed married to him, regardless of his mistreatment and cheating.”
She stretched her arms across the table, hesitated, but then carefully clasped his hands in hers. “Ross, I have so many regrets. And the main one is allowing fear of your rejection to keep me from reaching out to you in all this time. As your mother, it was up to me to connect with you, not place that burden on you. I just ask for your forgiveness.” A tear