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She saw his eyes widen. “I thought you broke up at around eighteen?”
“Nineteen, so maybe it was seven years. We started dating when we were twelve. Never broke up until the end.” She sighed.
“Do you still love him?”
“No, not anymore. It took a while; my life was wrapped up in him for a long time. It was hard to get it untangled.” Many years of her life had been wasted on him.
“Do you know where he is?”
“Yes, Bismarck, married with three kids. Frank moved to be closer to him. Maybe he has another kid now. I don’t know.” Once Frank was gone, her connection to him was gone as well.
He nodded. “Did you go to college?”
“No, I didn’t have the grades to get in.”
“How did you not have good grades? You are the most studious person I know. You are always working on something at your desk,” he stated.
Once again, she felt ashamed that she didn’t do a lot of work for him. For years she had spent her work hours editing her books. She vowed she would stop soon.
“Different skill set, working in an office I have worked at for years. I barely graduated from school. I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been in Landstad.” She shrugged, hating to actually admit it.
He looked confused. “Why?”
“Because no place else would have let me graduate.” She bit her lip, not wanting to get into her past.
The principal had all but told her that when she was actually graduating. He had been nice about it and had been very understanding, but he had also told her that her chances of getting into a college were nonexistent. At the time, she didn’t care. Later she wished she had tried anyway, for herself more than anything.
“No, why did you barely graduate?” He squeezed her hand as he asked.
“I was sick a lot the last few years of high school, so I missed a lot of school.” She looked at their hands, not at him.
“But you never miss work.” It was the truth—she never used her sick leave from work. She usually never even got sick, not anymore.
“I was born with a birth defect that affected my kidneys. By high school, one had failed, and the other was failing. I had a transplant the year after I graduated, so I am better now. Well, I have only one kidney, but I’m better compared to how I was before that.” She hated to tell people that she was weak. Staying in Landstad meant she rarely ran into anyone who didn’t know.
“I never would have guessed.”
“I always thought that Frank liked me because I spent so much time laying on his couch watching TV with him. He would sit in his recliner, and we would make fun of the people on the screen. Franky hated watching TV with his dad. I loved it. I only had Chester in my life, and he was a drunk, so it was fun to have something of a dad in Frank. And I was sort of daughter to him.” She smiled at the memory.
“So, you would go to your boyfriend’s house when you were sick and watch TV with his dad?” Anderson asked in disbelief.
“You make it sound weird. I lived there for two years. His parents were like my parents.”
“You lived with your teenage boyfriend and his parents?” His fingers stopped touching her hair.
“From sixteen to just after graduation, then we moved in here.” She looked around at the apartment. It hadn’t changed much since then, except the kitchen, and she wished she had somehow made it more of her own since then.
“I thought your mom was super religious? She let her daughter live in sin?” he questioned.
“I said I was doing it, and she didn’t say no. She had been married to Chester for two years by then, and we did not get along. It was easier for me not to be in the house.” The fights had stopped between them, and so far, they hadn’t arisen again. But since then, Chester had stopped drinking, and she had become an adult.
“Then you moved in here with him?”
She wondered what he was thinking. Even at the time, it had been weird living with Franky and his parents. But it had been so much better than her mom's house. It had been her chance to see what being in a real family was like.
“Yes, I started working for his dad to make money for a house and other stuff when he graduated. He dumped me in April, not long after the transplant, for the woman he married. They had been dating since late September. Most people in town don’t know about the transplant and thought I was hiding because of the scandal of the breakup. But it took a long time to get better, longer than I had expected. Then I just started back here because Frank wanted me to still work for him.” She laid her head back down.
“Did you ever think about leaving?” His fingers skimmed over the shell of her ear.
