“I was impossible. I know I was. I’m sorry,” Emma said quietly.
“A wise friend recently reminded me that grief is like the ocean, some days calm, other days stormy and ugly. But in time, you figure out how to navigate the waters.”
Emma nodded. She had spent far too long dog-paddling in place.
“Tell me about tonight. I know you don’t want to talk about it but I need to know. I only heard the tail end of that conversation. I would like to hear all of it.”
Emma again fought the urge to escape up the stairs, to find the peace she always did with her daughter. She couldn’t. Not now. Rosie wanted to know the truth about that day.
Sylvia’s words rang in her ears.Youkeepingthe truth from your mother has only driven a wedge between you that widens with each passing year. All you’ve achieved by your silence is further pain on both sides.
“I don’t want to talk about it again,” she admitted. “I would rather forget the whole thing happened.”
Her mother gave her a look filled not with the anger she might have expected for her secrets but a compassion that made Emma want to weep.
“You can’t forget, though. Can you?”
She shook her head, miserable at heart. She didn’t want to rehash the past with her mother, the past that had haunted her for a decade.
“What happened?” Rosie pressed.
She released a breath, knowing the time for secrets was well and truly past. “I was early for our appointment to go driving together, about an hour earlier than Dad was expecting me. I heard two people in his office and started to go in when I realized who they were and what they were doing. They were on the sofa. She was in his lap. They were making out.”
Rosie drew in a sharp breath, her face pale again. “Are you sure you didn’t misunderstand what you saw?”
“This is one of the reasons I didn’t want to tell you, Mom, because you always want to look for the best in people. There was nobestin this situation. They were all over each other.”
She hated that she had to talk about this. More, she hated that was one of her last memories of the man she had adored. The man who had coached her soccer team, who never complained about helping her with math homework, who loved to take her hiking and biking and tide pooling.
“What... what did they say when you interrupted them?”
“I didn’t give either of them a chance to say anything. Not then, anyway. I ran out, afraid I was going to puke. When I calmed down, I went back into the office, making a lot of noise that time and calling his name so they knew I was there.”
“You were fifteen. You could have misunderstood what you saw.” The desperation in her mother’s voice made her heart hurt.
“I did not misunderstand. I know what I saw. More than that, Dad confirmed it when I confronted him about it.”
“You... you talked about Pam with him?”
“I wasn’t going to. I wanted to forget everything. But we were driving along the cliff road and he turned the radio on. Some old song came on and Dad made a big point of talking about how it was one of your favorites and how the two of you danced to it together at your prom. And I just... lost it.”
She had hurled bitter, angry words at him, telling him she had seen him and Pam on the couch in his office. She told him she couldn’t believe he would ruin all their lives because he had a thing for his secretary. How could he betray Rosie like that? Now they would get a divorce and Emma would have to shuttle between their houses and they wouldn’t be able to renovate Stormhaven after all and Emma was going to be miserable.
It had all been self-absorbed. How his disgusting behavior was going to impactherlife. She supposed that was not an unusual reaction for a teenager but it made her cringe now.
Her father had been devastated. She could still replay the conversation in her head.
“It was one kiss, that’s all,” her dad had insisted.
“How stupid do I look? That was not a kiss between people who’d never kissed each other before.”
“Okay. We’ve kissed a few times, but that’s all. It’s never gone beyond that. I won’t let it. I love your mom.”
“How can you even use that word? If you loved Mom, you would not have any desire to be bumping uglies with your secretary.”
She had been so very angry and hadn’t been paying attention to the road. The next thing she knew, the car was spinning out of control, heading for the guardrail and then flipping over it, rolling down and down and down.
Her father hadn’t been wearing a seat belt. He must have taken it off in the split second the car started to spin in a vain attempt to grab the steering wheel and wrestle the car back onto the road.