and ate paste. From day one Rex had been as obvious as mud on white pants.
Nearly four years ago, Rex had started seeing a therapist for anxiety, an affliction that had cropped up shortly after Daphne landed an unexpected book deal with a children’s publishing house. After a few years of therapy, Rex declared Daphne emotionally and physically unavailable. Supposedly her emotional abandonment left him no choice but to load his gargantuan pickup truck and drive away from twenty years of marriage.
Daphne would have been more upset if she hadn’t been so exhausted from a deadline, making Ellery’s costume for sorority rush, and the other multitude of tasks sitting heavy on her shoulders. To be honest, her first thought was at least now she didn’t have to iron his shirt for work the next day . . . and she could watch what she wanted on TV that night without argument.
Daphne had always loved Rex, or thought she’d loved him. But perhaps she’d merely settled because that was all she’d been offered. When she’d gotten pregnant at Winter Formal (thanks to a five-year-old dry condom Rex had been toting around for the special occasion), both Rex’s father and hers insisted they marry in order to keep the baby.
So they had.
There had been good times and not-so-good times. That was marriage. Daphne had been content raising Ellery, baking cookies for fund-raisers, and being the perfect wife she’d pictured in her mind for so many years—self-sacrificing, ever smiling, always comforting. She’d worked at a preschool to make ends meet, balanced the books at Rex’s AC-repair company, and tried to make the little things count. She’d gone all in on the American dream.
Until the day she made copies of a silly book she’d created for her pre-K classes and one of the moms sent it to her cousin, who happened to be an editorial director at Little Red Barn Books. Daphne’s world had busted wide open into a dream she’d only ever nurtured in the darkest recesses of her heart.
Ever-obvious Rex could say whatever he wanted about emotional abandonment, but the truth was he didn’t know how to handle Daphne becoming a successful author. At first he’d patted her on the head, assuming she had a new hobby like the time she decided to try scrapbooking. Then she got an agent (she had an agent!), another book deal (six figures!), went on a book tour (hello, San Francisco!), and Rex didn’t have his dinner on the table every night at six o’clock.
And one evening Rex delivered a well-rehearsed diatribe on what she’d done wrong and why that had led to him leaving her. Oddly enough, Daphne hadn’t collapsed on the ground, heartbroken.
Nope. She’d merely shrugged and said she understood how he felt. And she had. Because until he’d uttered those words—I’m not happy, Daph—she’d thought she was happy. But she wasn’t. Her career had brought her a satisfaction she’d never thought she needed. She’d changed, and she hadn’t wanted to go back to the person she was.
So maybe she had emotionally abandoned Rex when she’d claimed herself.
“You’re not mad, are you?” Clay asked, interrupting her thoughts.
“At what?”
“Me saying that stuff. I mean, it was a compliment, you know.” He looked worried.
“I know it was. It’s fine,” she said, trying to brush the whole thing off with a wave of her hand. “Makes this ol’ gal feel good to think at one point she had it going on.”
“Hey, now, Ellery’s mom has got it going on.” He sang it. Then he winked at her.
Heat flashed through her. That had been a popular song back when Ellery was a child. Daphne used to sing it into Ellery’s hairbrush when she got her dressed for school. To feel such pleasure at Clay’s words was pathetic—so very pathetic and embarrassing—but she couldn’t help herself. It was nice to feel like she wasn’t a dusty old bag waiting for the chariot of death. This was way different from being declared the hottest little number since Marlene Dietrich by her dad’s cronies at the assisted-living complex. Some of those guys didn’t see too well.
This was a young, half-naked, hot man in a tool belt. A guy not even Daphne’s accomplished, gorgeous daughter had been able to catch. Not that Ellery would ever admit it.
Clay clipped the tape measure onto his low-hanging jeans and looked out the opening of the new addition where a few other men hammered on things. A saw in the background whined, and dust kicked up.