I'll Be Your Blue Sky (Love Walked In #3)(23)

If I had expected to fling open the door and announce my news—and I think I had expected that, the flinging part definitely—by the time I actually stood outside it, I could barely bring myself to knock. I listened to my mom’s and Cornelia’s voices, and I knew that they were getting the kids ready for the wedding. I knew that my mother said, “Just a few more, Rose. Gosh, you’re being so patient and staying so still!” because she was curling Rose’s hair. I knew from Cornelia’s singing “High Hopes”—cheerfully but with a note of exasperation and interspersed with commentary like, “Would you look at that perfect loop? I’ve never seen a more perfect loop in all my life”—that she was trying to inspire Simon to tie his own shoes, a task he loathed. Typical, goofy family stuff, but as I stood outside that door, steeped in my own horribleness, it all struck me as astoundingly beautiful.

You don’t even deserve to overhear this, I told myself, much less to go in and be part of it. But I had to go in. There was music to be faced, a wedding to be dismantled (oh, God, the wasted money alone made me feel like a criminal), and anyway, deserving or not, even in the smack-dab, ugly middle of my self-loathing, I wanted them, my mother and almost-mother. I wanted just to be near them. No flinging open the door for me, though, just barely more than a brush of knuckles against the frame.

Cornelia called out, “Dev, if that’s you, get in here and take this shoeless wolf-boy of a child off my hands!”

I opened the door. “It’s not Dev.”

Everyone, even Simon the wolf-boy, went still, staring at me.

“I’m not marrying Zach,” I said, bleakly. “It’s over.”

That’s when the relief broke like morning across their faces. After one quick glance at each other, they shook it off, composed their features into looks of concern, but I’d seen it. And still I felt only wretched.

“Oh, honey,” said my mother. “What happened? Can you tell us?”

“It’s just that no one should live with someone who scares her.” I blurted it out, but as soon as I had, I hated myself. If I’d sat for hours calculating what explanation would garner me the most sympathy and support from these two particular women, I would have made a beeline for that one. The words sounded overblown, underhanded, manipulative, painting me as the victim when I was the monster; the fact that the words were also true just didn’t matter.

“Oh, God,” said Cornelia, standing up from her chair.

“No,” I said. “It wasn’t like that. He never hurt me. I just mean—”

I tipped sideways and leaned against the wall.

“Kids!” said Cornelia, clapping her hands. “Run down to your brother’s room. Tell him to take you out on the lawn for—oh, anything. What’s your favorite game?”

“Croquet,” said Rose. “But in my dress?”

She fanned open her rose-sprigged skirt with her two hands, and love for her squeezed my heart like rubber bands. I would’ve given anything to go with her, to be a nine-year-old girl in a dress, heading out into the sunshine to play croquet.

“No worries, darling,” said Cornelia, smiling. “Tell Dev I said you need to play outside. No shoes necessary.”

And in a rush of pastels, clean hair, and gorgeousness, they were gone. My mother and Cornelia turned to me, waiting.

“Okay,” I said, holding up my hand like a traffic cop, “but you are not allowed to comfort me. I am a terrible, careless, destructive person for letting things get this far.”

“But—” said my mother.

“Promise. No reassuring words. Not even a hug.”

“You drive a hard bargain,” said Cornelia, narrowing her eyes.

“Promise.”

They sighed and nodded.

With as little editorializing and emotional display as possible, I recounted my conversation with Edith.

“She helped you. Maybe she saved you,” said my mother, quietly. “A total stranger.”

“Don’t,” I snapped. “I see where you’re going, and no one, no one is allowed to feel guilty or take responsibility for my mistakes. They’re horrendous and all mine.”

“We had misgivings,” said Cornelia, sadly. “All along.”

“But you trusted me,” I said. “Because I’ve always been pretty trustworthy. Just not this time.”

“You know,” said Cornelia, pointing Simon’s shoe at me. “And I’m really not comforting you here or letting you off the hook or whatever it is you don’t want me to do, but you know that however terrible you think what you did was, doing the thing you didn’t do would have been much, much worse. Unforgivably worse.”

“Yes,” I said, grimly. “I do know that.”

“Go home, sweetheart,” said my mother. “Leave everything to us.”

I shook my head. “‘I won’t be gotten out of anything anymore, thanks.’”

It was a quote from Cornelia’s favorite movie. She smiled but shook her head.

“The power of The Philadelphia Story is nearly limitless, but nope, not this time,” she said. “You must let us do this. We command you. You’re not the only one who feels guilty here.”

I started to protest, but she cut me off with a hand slash to her throat.