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Chapter Thirty
Decidingagainst knocking on her daughter a door, Sera walked in, happy she had taken the lock off the door when Emma hit puberty. It had worked well with the older five, so why not with Emma also? Not that she had had many reasons to come into her room. Emma was not a Lovely in that regard.
“Can we talk, Em?” Her daughter lay face-down on her bed, her head on her pillow.
“No,” came the muffled response.
“What was that? I think I heard a ‘yes.’” Sera walked into her daughter’s room. Sera knew that the pale blue walls were not her daughter’s favorite or even close, but Emma never said anything about it. None of her kids mentioned if they liked or didn’t like their rooms after Sera had decorated a decade before. Emma had yet to put up a poster of any kind. That might have been because her daughter wasn’t into posters or maybe she remembered the poster battle of a few years before, when Harper had pulled every single poster off the walls after someone had ripped her Gordon Ramsay one. Posters were not a topic to bring up, even today.
“Mom, you can just leave and spend more time with your boyfriend.” Emma sat up and leaned against the wall behind her bed.
“Emma, you know I won’t replace you.” She sat down and squeezed her daughter’s knee, seeing her anger for what it was.
“It doesn’t matter, Mom.” Her eyes said something completely different, though.
“Yes, it does, honey.” She took her daughter’s hand. Her first baby, who changed everything in Sera’s life, now she thought that her own mother could just forget about her when a man came into her life.
“Are you going to move in with him?” Emma tried to shake her hand away, but Sera held tight.
“I don’t know. We haven’t talked about that,” she admitted. Sera knew she wanted to be with Harrison and knew he wouldn’t be comfortable here, but she didn’t think she would be comfortable moving into his condo when there wasn’t enough room for their girls.
“But you will.”
“Yes. As will you because you are my daughter, and I will not leave you behind.”
“What about your other daughters?” There it was, the change that Sera finding love would cause her daughters. Emma saw it right away. They all did, but Emma was the most affected by it.
“They are all adults, Emma. When you are an adult, you can also live away from me.” She squeezed her hand. “Just not far.”
“Mom.” She rolled her eyes, her dad’s eyes.
“Em, you know that I would do anything for you. Anything. But I am going to live my own life. That includes falling in love with a man and moving in with him. Living with him away from this house.” She hoped Emma would understand. She hoped Emma would want her to be happy, even if she only had a teenager’s insight.
“But why him? What is so special about him?” Emma tried to shake the hand off again and failed.
“I have no good answer for that one. All I know is it has always been him.”
“But you just met.”
“No, we have known each other for some time.”
“I know. You work together.”
“A little more than that, Em. We met in college.”
“You never said that.” Emma replied in surprise, as if that made all the difference to her.
“I was keeping that to myself.” Sera squeezed her hand.
“Did you date then?”
“Not exactly.”
“What does that mean?” Emma’s eyebrow went up in question, a new Emmaism that Sera was starting to get used to.
“We sort of talked once or twice and then slept together,” Sera admitted, trying not to blush but failed.
“You slept with someone you barely knew?” Emma’s eyes were wide in shock, which almost caused Sera to laugh. Hadn’t this kid paid any attention to the conversations around the house? It happened all the time, and everyone talked about it.
