didn’t like me. I asked her what I’d done so I could apologize, but she just gave me one of those looks and said that I drove her best housekeeper away. For weeks afterward, when she was interviewing women, she would tell me that it was all my fault that she had to take time to find another one. I was careful to never make friends with another housekeeper again.”
“Oh, honey.” Sophie tried to take in Emma’s rambling that jumped from cupcakes to housekeepers, and just the idea that her friend wasn’t thinking straight put tears in her eyes. “That’s not the reason we left, and you did nothing wrong. Your mother thought your father was having an affair with my mother. Mama tried to tell her it wasn’t true, that she would never do that, but Victoria wouldn’t listen and told her to get out.”
Emma’s eyes filled with tears, too. “I’m sorry. I always thought Rebel was sent away because of me. Why would Mother do that?”
“You don’t have to apologize. You and I did nothing.” Another wave of guilt washed over Sophie for not trying harder to stay in touch with her friend. She was beginning to think maybe Rebel was right about Victoria driving Emma crazy so that she could have attention for taking care of a delicate child. That didn’t sound like her, though. She didn’t want to take care of anyone but herself. She would have an agenda, but what could she gain by treating Emma like she did? Why would a mother do that to her own child?
“Mother told me once that she had never wanted children. Maybe she was ashamed of me because I wasn’t strong like her,” Emma said.
“I wouldn’t know about that, but you are going to get strong while you’re here,” Sophie said. “How’d your conversation with her go? I guess not well, since you murdered your phone.”
“She said she was sending Jeffrey to bring me home. I told her that I was staying right here. I’ll need to use the house phone or yours to call her each night. She gets really angry if I don’t call, and she’s horrible when she’s mad,” Emma said.
“You can use anything that’s here anytime you want, but why did you destroy your phone?” Sophie brought her cake to the living room and sat down across from Emma.
“Because it has a tracker app on it so she can see where I am every minute. I skipped out on a therapist visit a long time ago and spent the day in the park,” Emma explained between bites. “I just wanted some time to sit and think without her telling me what to do and when to do it. That was the last time I got to go off on my own. I’m ready to get well, or at least I think I am.”
“You don’t really have to call Victoria every night unless you want to,” Sophie said.
Emma thought about that for a while and then shook her head. “I don’t guess I do.”
“That’s up to you,” Sophie said. “And you can use either of the phones anytime you want. I talked to my mother tonight, too, but I’ll have to call Teddy tomorrow.”
“Why?” Emma was still working around the idea of not talking to Victoria every evening.
“Because of the time difference. Over in France, it’s about seven hours later than it is here,” Sophie answered. “I’ll call in the morning when it’s just early afternoon there.”
“Are you going to marry him?” Emma polished off the last of her cake. “We always said we would be married to our art, not a man.”
“We were just kids back then,” Sophie said, “and neither of us had much in the way of a positive outlook when it came to marriage, but Teddy and I might never get married. We don’t need a marriage license to know that we are committed. We’ve been together for ten years. We love each other, and we’re fine the way we are.”
Besides, he deserves someone a whole lot better than I can ever be, Sophie thought.
Emma shivered. “I’m never getting married, but when I build my tiny house, I want a cat.”
“Then you’ll have one,” Sophie said.
Chapter Three
Sophie awoke the next morning at dawn, made a hasty trip to the bathroom, and then pulled on a pair of denim shorts under her ragged nightshirt. She stopped in the kitchen long enough to put on a pot of coffee, peeked into Emma’s bedroom