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“My dad felt like he lost relevance in our lives. He said that even though my mom worked, he came from a generation where the woman was the heart of the household. As such, he felt she was more important in her children’s lives than he was. He felt displaced.”
“Did you see him every week when he lived in Elk Lake?” Jamie asks.
“He got us Monday through Wednesday and one weekend a month.”
“That’s not much.”
“It wasn’t,” I tell him. “And I’ve always felt like I was missing out.”
“And what about your mom?”
“My mom always said the divorce was her fault. She seemed to think she was supposed to work full timeanddote on my dad full time. She thought he left because she wasn’t enough.”
“That’s how I feel,” he confesses.
I stop the motion of the swing with my feet and turn to him. “You think Beth left becauseyouweren’t enough? That’s ridiculous.”
“Why? If I had been able to do more, maybe she would have been able to get well.”
“Jamie.” I reach out and put my hands on either side of his face. “Beth had postpartum depression. Her hormones were to blame, not you.”
“It’s easy to say that from the outside, but when it’s happening to your family, you can’t help but feel responsible.”
And just like that I understand that Jamie isn’t just protecting Sammy’s heart by not dating seriously and constantly playing “Come Here/Get Away” with me. He’s protecting his own.
CHAPTERTHIRTY-FOUR
JAMIE
“I’ve never shared this stuff with anyone else,” I tell Melissa after baring my soul about my relationship and fears regarding Beth.
She starts the swing in motion again. “I’m glad you told me. You can’t keep everything bottled up inside.”
“But now I feel like you know more about me than I know about you.”
“You know about my parents’ divorce.”
“What about your romantic relationships?” I ask her.
“I don’t really like to talk about them. I mean, I’m still single, so it’s not like anything has worked out.”
“What about the guy you were engaged to?” This isn’t any of my business, but now that Melissa knows my story, I want to know hers.
“Dillion,” she says. “We were never really engaged. In fact, I didn’t know he was going to ask me to marry him until after he died.”
“Would you have said yes?” I don’t know why, but I hope she says no.
“Had he asked me right before he died, I wouldn’t have. We’d only been seeing each other for ten months. It would have felt too soon. But if he’d waited a few months … maybe.”
“Do you think about him a lot?” I know I’m prying, but we seem to have entered a kind of bubble where the real world doesn’t seem to matter.
“Not anymore. And when I do, it’s less about him than what I feel like I’m missing in my life.”
“A partner?” I ask.
She nods her head. “I have great friends, a job I’ve mostly enjoyed, and I love the town I live in. But I want to be a mom and a wife. I want a chance to create the kind of family I always wished mine could have been.”
I feel like the world’s biggest heel right now. I’m dangling something Melissa wants in front of her, and yet I don’t want to stop. I like her. I want her in my life. I just can’t have her in my life in that way.
