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Hadley wrinkled her nose. “But why?”
“God moved her to, pumpkin. Let’s all say amen and get back to the movie.”
Emma finished the prayer. “Amen,” we said in unison.
The movie continued and Emma leaned over and whispered, “We didn’t pray in my house growing up. It was confession on Saturday and church on Sunday. I could say the Act of Contrition faster than my childhood best friends, Tina and Kristin…if that helps any.”
“Duly noted,” I said with a wink.
Three quarters of the way through the film, and my little pumpkin was out like a light.
“She’s out,” Emma whispered, taking the popcorn bowl from next to Hadley and setting it on the coffee table. I covered Hadley with a blanket and settled in next to her, leaning against the barrage of pillows. Emma did the same on the other side of her.
We sat in silence for a few minutes, the movie still playing, before Emma started talking.
“Did you and Lisa want more kids?”
Pulling in a deep breath, I slowly let it out. “No. We only got married because she got pregnant. Then she lost the baby, and we felt like we owed it to our families and ourselves to try to make it work. We’d been considering a divorce when we found out she was pregnant with Hadley. I thought it might bring us closer, but all it did was divide us more and leave us both bitter.”
Her brow lifted. “Bitter?”
Rubbing the back of my neck, I sighed. “I loved Lisa; please don’t think I didn’t. She gave me this precious angel. It’s just,what we had…it wasn’t what I thought love was supposed to be. And I know for a fact it wasn’t what Lisa wanted. She wasn’t ready to be a mother. She loved Hadley, but in a way, I think she resented the fact that she got pregnant again.”
Emma nodded. “When I married Ben, I was only twenty-two. He was in the Marines, and when I think back now, I wonder if I was simply in love with the idea of him. My father left when I was young—eight, to be exact. He picked his mistress over not only my mother, but me as well. Of course, he made sure to let me know I wasn’t his daughter before he left.”
“What?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I never told my mother that he told me, and she never bothered to tell me herself. I never saw him again. I’d grown up with such an empty feeling, never knowing the truth about my father, or why he didn’t love us enough to stay. I thought Ben would fill that emptiness…but I was wrong.”
“Emma,” I whispered, as my chest literally ached at the sound of her pain.
“Things were hard, and my mother struggled emotionally as well as financially. Maybe I was looking for a sense of security. I don’t know. It was hard for me to go to school while trying to manage everything. Taking care of myself, my mom when she would fall into a depression, focusing on my classes.”
“Did you love him?” I asked.
Chewing on her lip, she shook her head. “In the beginning, I thought I did. Toward the end, I hated him so much, I could hardly stand to look at him.”
Our eyes met, and I wanted to ask her more, but I didn’t. It was her story to tell, when she wanted to tell it. If she ever did.
I reached my hand over for Emma’s. She laced her fingers in mine and our hands rested above Hadley’s head. It was time for me to be honest with myselfandEmma. “That first day, in the café.”
She grinned, and my stomach flipped.
“You looked at me, and this jolt of something went right through my body. I’d never experienced that before in my life. For the last year, I’ve felt so empty. A lot of it was guilt, anger, and downright fear that I was going to mess up raising Hadley.”
Emma nodded slightly, to indicate she understood.
“Then you showed up in our lives and everything changed. I wanted to deny it, because a part of me felt like I didn’t deserve to find someone like you. I know you have your own past, but you have to know how much you’ve changed us, Emma. Hadley is happy, and I’m not sitting downstairs drinking at night, trying to push away the guilt of not loving Lisa. What I did after she died.”
“You didn’t do anything wrong.”
I scoffed. “Sleeping with your dead wife’s best friend a week after she died is pretty wrong.”
Her hand squeezed mine. “If you hadn’t been drinking, would you have done it?”
“No! Never in a million years.”
“There you go, Aiden. Sometimes we make mistakes that we can’t take back, but those mistakes still teach us something. They mold us to be a different person, to make different choices next time. To make therightchoices. For years, I made the wrong choice to stay with a man who was slowly tearing me down, until one day, I woke up and I stopped being afraid and feeling guilty for wanting to leave. You’ve got to stop beating yourself up.”
