Tease (Cloverleigh Farms #8)(22)

I stopped chewing for a second, then swallowed. “You do?”

“Yeah.” He took a bite of his gnocchi. “I remember . . . what you told me.”

“About Carla—my mother?”

He nodded. “Do you ever talk to her?”

“Not really. She reaches out every once in a while, but . . .” My voice trailed off. “It was pretty obvious when she left that Mom was a role she was done playing. According to her, she never wanted it in the first place. At least, that’s what she said that night.”

“That must have been hard. I always wondered . . . never mind.” Hutton took another bite.

“What? You can ask me.”

He hesitated again, but eventually spoke. “I guess I just wondered how that happened. How you overheard it—what she said.”

“I was eavesdropping on a fight my parents were having after I was supposed to be asleep.”

“Oh.” He nodded in understanding.

“There was a huge thunderstorm that night, and those always made me nervous. I used to go to my parents’ room and ask if I could sleep in their bed. Sometimes they’d let me, other times my dad would tuck me back into my bed again and stay with me until I fell asleep. But that night, when I got out of bed and crept into the hall, I heard them fighting.”

“I’m sorry,” Hutton said quietly.

“They fought a lot back then.” I reached for my wine, but I knew nothing would ever fully take the sting out of what I’d heard that night. Not wine, not distance, not time.

I took another swallow as their argument replayed in my head, as clearly as if they’d had it last night—my dad telling my mom they couldn’t afford her out-of-control spending, my mother lashing back about being neglected and ignored, my dad shushing her so they wouldn’t wake up the kids, my mother calling him horrible names and accusing him of favoring his daughters over his wife . . .

You’re drunk, Carla.

So what? What do you care? You don’t! You’ve never cared about me. You don’t love me. You only married me because I got pregnant! You did your duty after you knocked me up!

Knocked her up? That had thrown me. Had my daddy hit my mommy? Is that how you got a baby?

I did the right thing for our family, he insisted.

Fuck you, Mack! I never wanted your kids in the first place. I hardly want them now.

As I told Hutton about the argument, goosebumps blanketed my arms. “I heard her say, ‘I never wanted your kids in the first place. I hardly want them now.’ I remember curling my body into a ball underneath the covers, like I was trying to make myself disappear.”

Hutton reached out and touched my wrist.

“He told her she didn’t know what she was saying. That she didn’t mean it. And she said he wasn’t in charge of her thoughts and didn’t get to decide how she felt about being a mother. She said she was sick and tired of her life. And when he said they could talk about it tomorrow and they should just go to bed, she said she’d already been to bed with someone that night, and it wasn’t him.”

“Fuck,” said Hutton.

“It confused me. I didn’t understand why my mother would have a bed somewhere else.” I took a breath. “My dad said he was tired of the arguing and she should just say what she wanted, and her answer was, ‘I want out.’”

“And she didn’t want to take you guys with her?”

I almost laughed. “No. But she wouldn’t have been able to anyway. The first thing my dad said was, ‘The girls stay with me.’”

He smiled. “Good for your dad.”

“He’s the best. And that did make me feel good—at least my dad still loved me. But it messed with my head, you know? Hearing my mother say those things. Up to that point, I thought all moms wanted kids. Suddenly that wasn’t true. My mother didn’t want me.” I sighed. “I went back into the bedroom and over to the desk where Millie had been working on a project for school, and I picked up the scissors. That was the first time I cut my hair.”

“Ah.”

“The next morning, everyone asked me why I’d done it, and I made something up. I never told anyone what I’d overheard.”

“Never?”

I shook my head. “No. I was scared of getting in trouble. All I could think of was that a good girl would not have listened. I was young, but I knew eavesdropping was wrong. I didn’t want my dad to be mad, I didn’t want my sisters to be hurt, and I was too ashamed to tell my friends. When they asked me why my mom moved out, I lied and said she had to go take care of her sick grandmother in Georgia.”

“That’s a lot of baggage for a kid to carry around.”

“It was. But I survived.”

He nodded. “I’m curious. What made you tell me at the library?”

“Honestly?” I reached for my wine again and finished it. Plunking the empty glass down, I said, “I have to confess—it was kind of an accident.”

Hutton got up, went to the wine fridge, and pulled out a new bottle. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you know how I sometimes say random things when I get nervous?”

“Like being engaged to a billionaire?” He worked the cork from the bottle with a noisy pop. “That our wedding is next month?”