it either. Because they were dirt poor in a town that had no way out once you had a kid.
Betsy moved onto the next bag, stacking up boxes of Goldfish crackers in her arms. “Which is easy to say when the person is going to do what you think they should. But the look on your face when I told you I’d changed my mind, that I was going to marry Mitchell and have the baby? You acted like I’d betrayed you.”
Lacey folded her arms and pressed them into her stomach. “Because I wanted you to have a great life. Because I wanted more for you than—” Lacey bit off the end of her sentence before she could finish it.
“This.” Her sister did it for her, her body sagging against the peeling kitchen cupboards. “You wanted more for me than this. You wanted more for me than being stuck here in no-hopeville with three kids and a husband you think is a total loser.”
“I’ve never said that.”
“Good grief, Lace. Your entire speech at our wedding was about how Mitchell didn’t deserve me and how out of his league I was.”
“I was eighteen.” Also, it was true. If it wasn’t for Mitchell, Betsy would have gotten out of Small Harbor. Just like Lacey had.
“You couldn’t get out of here fast enough, and I don’t blame you. But you never come back. It’s like you think even stepping foot in this town is going to taint you or somehow ensnare you in its net. You’ve never been ensnared by anything. If anything, it’s the opposite. You’re the one who leaves and never looks back.”
“What are you talking about?”
“How many guys have you dated in the last few years?”
Lacey shrugged. “I don’t keep count. But to be fair, most of them never made it past a few dates. Only a few were exclusive.”
“Because they didn’t ask, or because you had one foot out the door the whole time?”
Lacey didn’t say anything. The truth was she was always the one who ended things. But none of them had ever made her want to stay.
Until Victor.
She closed her eyes. Tried to bat away the memory of Victor’s arms around her and his lips on hers. How even in the silence, his love for her was louder than anything she’d ever known.
Betsy crumbled the next bag, the paper crunching between her hands. “Why do you think I don’t want you showing up here out of the blue like the Fairy Godmother? Because you break the kids’ hearts when you disappear again. They never know if or when you’re going to come back. If you want a relationship with my kids, you have to show up. Not once every few years. Often. Summer. Christmas. Thanksgiving. You have to be here for some of it. Otherwise, you’re never going to be anything more than the mysterious aunt who sent gifts and threw money at their college fund.”
“What if I came to visit more often. Like …” She tried to conjure up something but had no idea what she could promise with the demands of the new job. “Twice a year?”
“That depends. Can you be nice to their dad?”
Lacey couldn’t even remember the last time she had even seen Mitchell. It had to have been just after Annie was born. But she wasn’t mean to him. He was just there. Like the thrift store furniture.
Betsy sighed. “Mitch is a good man, Lace. He doesn’t drink, he treats me well, he loves our kids. And trust me, he is so aware of what I gave up for him. Then you show up, looking at me like I’m a hostage who needs rescuing. Every time you’re here, you make my husband feel like an utter failure. He’s told me that I should leave him. That we should get a divorce because he knows you would give the kids and me a much better life than he can.”
Mitchell had said that? Mitchell hadn’t trapped her sister in a life of poverty and drudgery? Mitchell had offered Betsy a way out? Lacey gaped at her sister. The gap between what she thought she knew and what Betsy was saying so big it was like she’d started speaking another language.
Betsy walked over so that she stood right in front of Lacey. Her own eyes staring back at her. “I need you to understand that I don’t need rescuing, Lace. I could leave tomorrow. Do you think I don’t know that all it would take