tied up with the feelings she had when they were together. Sophie sent up a silent prayer that she wouldn’t make a mess of the responsibility.
Chapter Four
The warm shower water beat down on Sophie’s back, easing the sore muscles in her shoulders from painting all day. A visual popped into her head of a tiny shower in the bathroom of her dorm back at the beginning of the second semester of her freshman year. That time, she had turned on the water and then slid down the back wall to sit with her knees pulled up against her chest. Her salty tears had blended with the warm water until she couldn’t cry anymore.
Had Emma gotten pregnant that first semester of college, too? Coming from her background, she would have felt even more guilty than Sophie still did. Sophie had never told anyone about that time in her life, not even Rebel, and she couldn’t imagine Emma having to tell Victoria such a thing.
Like mother, like daughter, the voice in her head taunted. You were the product of an affair, and then you turned around and did the same thing as your mother.
“Maybe so,” Sophie agreed. “But neither of us knew those sorry bastards were married.”
She didn’t have to close her eyes to see the dark-haired artist in her freshman class, or to feel the excitement when he flirted so blatantly with her. He had been brought in as a substitute professor for the six weeks that the regular teacher was on maternity leave. His name was Lucas Deville, and he was from Chicago. Sophie’s affair with him lasted the last three weeks he was at the college, and then he was gone. When the teacher returned, she told them that Lucas had gone back to Illinois and had gotten there in time to be present as his wife gave birth to their third child. That was the first that Sophie had heard about the man being married. Standing there under the spray of the water that evening in the trailer, she felt the same guilt that she had felt that day.
She turned off the water and threw back the curtain. She wrapped a towel around her body and another around her hair. Unlike Emma, Sophie could remember every single memory of that time clearly. They were etched into her mind like they had been branded there. Lucas had courted her, seduced her, and then left without ever mentioning a wife or children. Not that she could lay all the blame on him. God only knew how flattered she had been when he paid so much attention to her. She could have said no that night he asked her to go to his apartment for a drink. He had been her teacher, after all.
At Christmastime, Sophie had gone home for the month and thought she had the flu. Rebel fed her noodle soup and lots of hot tea. When it was time to go back to college, Sophie had kicked the rotten bug and could keep food on her stomach. A week after classes started, she realized that she’d missed a period. She bought a pregnancy test but refused to believe the results when it showed her the positive sign. She went back to the store and bought three more—all turned out positive.
She didn’t want to be a single mother. She had a career ahead of her, and yet, she couldn’t live with herself if she gave a child away. Her mother had kept her and sacrificed her pride by working for wealthy women who looked down on her and even accused her of affairs like Victoria had. Sophie had woken up every day worrying about what to do, and then, six weeks later, she lost the baby.
She had cried for three days after the trip to the emergency room. In her mind, she had killed her own baby with negative thoughts because she didn’t want it to ruin her career. Now, she was thirty-five and her biological clock was ticking louder and louder. Teddy wanted children, but Sophie wasn’t sure she deserved to be a mother again.
“Did Emma lose a baby, too?” she muttered as she padded down the hall and into her bedroom.
She dressed in a pair of shorts and an orange tank top, brushed her still-damp hair up into a ponytail and headed out to have supper with Josh, Arty, and Filly. When she reached the living room, she noticed the sliding doors to the back porch were