with the sunlight streaming over him. They cooked dinner, laughed at inside jokes. He encouraged her every day, doling out caring words like they were limitless and unconditional even though she knew such words always had strings, even if you couldn’t see them at first.
“I can’t believe we’ve almost finished this bloody thing,” he said, flipping through the scrapbook. In reality, it wasn’t as good as Liv’s work—there were dried bits of glue on some of the pages, random specks of glitter that refused to budge after the “glitter incident,” and some pretty shoddy washi tape application. But it was filled with love in every page, in every photo, in every dotted i.
She settled into the seat next to him. Then she made a snorting sound. “God, I couldn’t even imagine what my parents would say if I presented them a handmade gift.”
“They wouldn’t appreciate it?”
“Darling, true gifts come from Fifth Avenue,” she said in her best impersonation of her mother. “How do I know it’s love if the price tag doesn’t have at least four zeroes?”
“She sounds like a nightmare,” he said, reaching for his coffee. With his other hand he fanned a section of ink where he’d glued down some gold stars.
“You know, I’ve tried really hard to understand her over the years.” Cora sighed. “My mother came from nothing. Her family immigrated to America when she was a little girl, and she shared a bed with her three sisters until they were teenagers. She worked her ass off to get through school, juggling cash jobs on the side to help keep her family afloat. They were dirt poor. She decided that nothing and nobody was going to stop her from having a future.”
“So that’s an excuse to be narcissistic?”
“I guess the fire to succeed was ultimately what became her downfall. Too much of any trait can be a bad thing.” Cora bit down on her lip. “Add to that a drinking problem and a tumultuous marriage… I don’t think parents ever mean to hurt their children.”
Cora looked at the scrapbook’s open pages, which contained pictures of a young Trent with his arms around his parents. She swallowed back against the words clogging her throat—he looked so happy in that picture, and he so easily labeled her mother, but did he have any idea who his mother was?
“Why do you let her treat you poorly?” he asked. “It’s unacceptable, even if she doesn’t hurt you intentionally. You deserve so much better than that.”
Her eyes prickled, but she wouldn’t let him see her cry, because this conversation sounded way too much like the ones she had with Alex. He didn’t understand why she kept trying with her parents, didn’t understand why she craved their love even after all her mother’s antics and her father’s adultery.
But maybe she needed to see this with Trent. It was proof that all relationships would turn out the same way no matter how good a partner you had. Alex wasn’t perfect by any means, but he was a good person. He cared, he was smart and attentive. Trent…well, Trent was on a whole other plane. His heart and soul were like beaming rays of sunshine.
And yet they had circled around to the same place, thinking she should quit on her family because things were tough.
“Is it so wrong that I’m a forgiving person?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No, but…isn’t there a line somewhere? Will you ever get to the point where enough is enough?”
No.
The word came out of nowhere into her mind, quietly, as though whispered. It frightened her. Was it really true that she would keep trying to build a strong relationship with her parents no matter how many times her mother hurt her? No matter how much her father didn’t believe in her talent?
“If you say no, I’m… I don’t even know,” Trent said, placing his coffee cup down with a dull thunk. “Parents should lift you up and help you with your dreams, and they should want you to have every good thing in life instead of trying to hold you down.”
He saw her now. The real Cora. Not the Cora who existed in Australia with carefree hair and her suntan and her ready smile and her sexy writer persona. No, this was who she really was—sad, lonely, unloved. For the first time since meeting Trent, she felt truly ashamed, but she didn’t want him to pity her. She didn’t want him to see her as the sad, pathetic creature