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“Your father and I will always love each other. A love that strong doesn’t end.”
“I just don’t understand this. For years I’ve guessed more than anything. Can you just tell me the truth?”
“Why now?” her mother asked.
“Because I feel so strongly for Carson that if he told me we can’t be together anymore I don’t think I’d want to look at him let alone act like we were close friends.”
“You don’t have a child together,” her mother said.
“If we did, I’d make it work, but I couldn’t be his friend. I couldn’t have another man I was married to be a close friend. No one would think you two were exes.”
“And that bothers you?” her mother asked. “We thought it’d make your life easier.”
“This isn’t about me. It’s about you and why you aren’t answering the question.”
“Laine, you know the answer. You knew it when you were a child. You saw how devastated I was that we split.”
“Why not fight harder to stay with him?”
“Because your father does what he wants. Once he makes his mind up there is no changing it.”
She knew that all too well.
“So you stayed single because you thought he’d change his mind?”
“No,” her mother said. “Because I couldn’t bear the thought of being with anyone else.”
“And then came Stewart?” she asked.
“I met him through your father. Not directly. I mean I met him before your father and I split. Then we ran into each other again years later. He knew about our divorce.”
“Did you start to date Stewart in the hopes Dad would be jealous?”
“That would be petty,” her mother said.
“You didn’t answer me,” she said.
“And I’m not going to. I love Stewart. He understood the situation. He knew the divorce wasn’t my choice, but he also knew that your father had no intention of getting back together.”
“Because Dad thought you should be with someone that could satisfy you more?”
“Laine,” her mother said. “That’s personal.”
“I know,” she said. “But you wanted more children. You had plenty of time to have them. You didn’t want to hurt Dad, did you?”
“I know you think that,” her mother said. “Maybe deep down that was part of it. The other part was, by the time I was in a good head space to think about having a child I was in my mid-thirties. We’d just moved out of the house here and you were in high school. I didn’t want to start over again.”
That thought never occurred to her. “Stewart didn’t want any children?”
“He did,” she said. “And I’m going to tell you something that no one knows. Not even your father.”
“If you don’t want me to know, then don’t tell me,” she said.
“I feel the need to tell you. Stewart and I tried for a year. It was your senior year in high school, into your first year of college. It wasn’t happening. I thought it was me. It wasn’t.”
Stewart was four years older than her mother. “Oh,” she said.
“We waited too long. I always worried that was on me. We talked about other options, but in the end decided that we loved each other enough.”
