choke her. “Well, I did. I should have done it long ago.”
Her mother grabbed a napkin from the lazy Susan and noisily blew into it. After a few seconds, she looked up. “I missed you, honey.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” Ellery said, her sigh slowly leaking. “I’m sorry about the way I left. It wasn’t cool of me. At the time I was angry at you, and maybe I wanted you to be as angry at me, too.”
“I was,” her mother said.
“Are you still?” Ellery asked.
Her mother shook her head. “Not really, but I’m confused by a lot of what you did. I have had time to think about what happened between us. We both hold fault. Our actions caused our own problems, I think. Or at least some of them did. My mama always said that you reap what you sow. Or maybe that’s the Bible, but either way, I came to terms with the fact that my decisions pushed you from me.”
“You haven’t tried to contact me,” Ellery said, twining her fingers together. “I didn’t expect that. I thought you’d fly out and drag me back.”
Daphne issued a snort. “Well, when I found out you moved, I drove like a bat out of hell to Texas to try and stop you.”
“I know. Gage talks to Evan, and Evan told him that you scared some guests. There was a complaint about people driving too fast in the parking lot and a recommendation of speed bumps.” Ellery smiled through her tears at the thought of her mother nearly mowing down people on her mission to stop her from leaving.
“He never told me that,” Daphne said, looking concerned.
“So you’re dating Evan?” Ellery asked.
“You’re dating Gage?”
Ellery laughed. “If you call living with someone dating, yeah. I mean, we’re figuring stuff out. He’s an ass sometimes, don’t get me wrong, but he calls me out on my bullshit. At the same time, he gives me validation in a way I never had. He’s teaching me a lot about life and how sweet and hard it can be. Looking back on my relationship with Josh, I can see so much wrong.”
Daphne tilted her head. “You didn’t love Josh?”
“I loved the idea of Josh, and bless his heart, he really did everything he could to play the part. It’s like all those prom-posals and crazy romantic gestures every girl thinks she wants—well, that was what Josh was. He was good at doing what he thought was love. He was bad at actually loving me. Of course, maybe he wasn’t capable. But no, I wasn’t in love with Josh. I was in love with the idea of love.”
“Easy to do.”
“Yeah, I wanted to believe I was doing the right thing. Like there was a perfect guy, a perfect career, and a perfect life. When that wasn’t enough, I made some bad decisions. Like Evan.”
“Did you think you were in love with him?” That question from her mother was loaded with so much—worry, fear, understanding.
“Nah. He seemed to understand so much about me. He was funny, flirty, and wise. After the first time he wrote—a really amusing email, I have to say—I searched for him on the internet. I don’t have to tell you he’s easy on the eyes, but the pictures on the website showed him with Poppy, and he looked so . . . capable and loving. That sounds weird, but he looked like a guy who would love a person for who they were. It’s really stupid, but the more I corresponded with him, the more I couldn’t stop. The first time I saw him, I knew I had built a sandcastle in the air, but I didn’t stop until he knew what I was doing. Then I was mad at him, too.” She gave a hard laugh. “I was messed up, Mom.”
Daphne slid a hand over to hers, untangling her fingers. “I made it worse for you, though.”
“I made it bad for myself. I own that.”
“But why did you run away? You didn’t have to leave.”
Ellery turned her hand over and threaded her fingers through her mother’s. “I’m choosing to think of it as not running away but running toward something I needed. I had a lot of self-truths I needed to face. Parts of me were unlikable, vain, manipulative, and too afraid to actually do the things I said I would. I allowed you and Daddy to fix things for me. Relied on Josh to fill the empty space when my ego got