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Because he’s right. Yes, we’ve been late to school. Yes, I’ve made crappy meals. And those things are probably true of every parent, at some point, but I’ve never had much perspective. He was six years older and already a success when he walked into the restaurant where I was waiting tables. He thought my youth and naïveté were “cute” at first. He loved thatI didn’t know how to pronounce “tapas” or use a corkscrew, that I’d never been on an airplane and couldn’t ski. But that all that changed once we were married. Suddenly, the things I didn’t know or couldn’t do well were flaws. He waseagerto point out the ways I was failing—at home, in public, as a mother, in bed. I was a worthless failure, nothing more, and it was hard to argue when I had no proof to the contrary, when there were no voices around but his.
Today, though, there are. Caleb said I’d done a good job, and people are excited about a program I created. Even if it’s temporary, even if I ultimately fail, I deserve better than to live in an echo chamber of Jeremy’s criticism. The three of us might not get the fairy tale, but we at least deserve better than we’ve had.
I haven’t cancelled the lawyer yet, and I’m not going to. I’ll put what I can on the old credit card and apply for new ones to cover the rest. Whatever it takes to get free of Jeremy…it’s worth it.
AFTER LUNCH ONSATURDAY, the twins and I drag the rusted old boat from beneath the deck and row out onto the lake. There have been no signs of life at Caleb’s house since yesterday. Not him, and also no lovely wife getting the paper or sipping coffee by the shore. Where the hell is she? If he was away for two weeks and she’s been gone since I arrived here...that’s a very long time for them to be apart.
The twins toss a net into the water and jostle the boat under the afternoon sun, hunting for pirate treasure. It’s the childhood I once envisioned for them, and if I can just get free of Jeremy, perhaps I can give it to them.
“Go that way, Mommy,” Sophie commands, pointing at thesection of the lake where branches are sticking out of the water, a warning I failed to heed once upon a time.
“I can’t,” I reply with a smile. “Remember me telling you about the time I got stuck out here? That’s where it happened.”
“Where that boy saved you when you were pretending to be Lady Victoria?”
Shelovesthat story. “Yep.”
“When will you read me the Lady Victoria book?” she asks. “When I’m eleven?” She’s completely forgotten about the net now.
I sink the oars into the water and start rowing us back toward the dock. “Not until you’re an adult.”
“Youread it when you were eleven,” she argues.
I laugh. “I assure you, Sophie, I shouldn’t have.”
It was on a shelf of books my aunt said were ‘not for children’ and sneaking it was unusually rebellious for a kid who’d never so much as walked into the backyard over the course of five summers. But my aunt was gone for the night and my feelings were hurt because my mother hadn’t shown up as planned. So, I snuck the book, and when I realized I’d gotten away with it, I became even bolder: if Lady Victoria could successfully manage to row a boat onto the lake unchaperoned, why couldn’t I? It was dark out. No one would see me.
In a turn of events straight out of Lady Victoria’s life, however, the boat got stuck, and it was Caleb who heard me calling for help, Caleb who cut across the water in the moonlight to rescue me.
It was…unbelievably romantic, and my tears dried instantly, watching him approach.
He reached me fast, grasping the side of the boat as he pushed his wet hair back from his forehead. He’d grown a lot more than I’d realized. Lord Devereaux had‘a face chiseled, as if by the Creator Himself, and a mouth made for sin’, but I was pretty sure Caleb’s face was more chiseled, his mouth even moresinful, though I wasn’t clear what exactly made a mouth sinful in the first place.
“I’m stuck,” I whispered. “And I don’t know how to swim.”
“Hang on. I’ll get you out.” He grinned at me, flashing a dimple I didn’t know he had. “While I’m working, maybe you can explain why you stole Miss Underwood’s boat.”
I knew I couldn’t tell him the truth. I’d spent eleven full years not telling anyone the truth, but I really wished I could.
“I borrowed it.” I tucked my feet close as he laid a muddy oar beside them. “But I was going to bring it back.”
He went to the far end of the boat, twisting it to and fro until it loosened at last. “You borrowed a boat in yourpajamasand took it out at night when you don’t know how to swim?”
“That was more Lady Victoria Jordan’s fault than mine. From my book.”
As he began pulling the boat to shore, I told him all about her rebellion, her long white gown, and the wicked charms of Lord Devereaux.
“Why is she so against marriage?” he asked. “And what makes Lord Devereaux’s charmswickedas opposed to being, you know, charming?”
He’d actually been listening to me, something my mother had never done. My love for him grew tenfold in that moment. “She’s fiercely independent. And he’s wicked because he doesn’t want to settle down.”
He raised a brow. “So they want the exact same thing, but it only makeshimwicked?”
I was about to explain that Lord Devereaux was also arake, which was apparently both the best and the worst thing a man could be during that historical period, but we’d already reached the dock. It had gone too fast, this time with him, and I’d wasted all of it telling him about abookwhen I’d meant to tell him aboutme.
I wanted him to know that I’d won an art contest, that todaywas my birthday, that my mother was beautiful and if he could just wait a couple of years, I probably would be too. But I didn’t know how to get it all out, so I stood in silence while he dragged the boat back under my aunt’s deck.
“I’m not going to tell anyone,” he said when he returned, “but you’ve got to promise me you won’t go out on the lake again until you’ve learned to swim.”
