Hudson(91)

Normally, I’d shrug her off. But the nostalgia made me strangely willing to chat. “I have to admit, this isn’t my thing. Yet, I’m glad I’m here too.” I hadn’t realized it until just that moment. She didn’t need to know that.

My mother took a strand of Mirabelle’s hair and wove it around the curling wand, seemingly oblivious to our conversation as she concentrated on her work.

“I’m sure you have a spiel waiting on the tip of your tongue, though,” Mirabelle said, touching up her lipstick. “How love is a myth and marriage the bane of all evil.”

I chuckled at the accuracy of her statement. “Not to mention that you’re barely old enough to drink. Quite young to be signing off your entire life.”

Her face fell slightly. She’d wanted me to deny my disdain for the practice of romantic union  , and I’d enforced it instead. Oh well. It was honest. What was I supposed to do? Lie?

So I wasn’t the type to put on niceties. But I could find another way to be supportive. Mirabelle had always been a bit of a Pollyanna. She’d make the best of anything. Maybe marriage actually would work for her. “I trust you know what you’re doing, Mirabelle. Don’t mind me.”

“I usually don’t.” Her grin was back, and I felt my shoulders relax. I hadn’t even realized I’d been tense. “And I do know what I’m doing. Adam is the best thing for me. He makes me happy. I make him happy. You know. It’s all a bunch of happy.”

Blah, blah, blah. It was what all the lovebirds said. Then a bump in the road, and everything fell apart. Love was so easily manipulated. So easily redirected. How could it ever be real? How could anyone be willing to give up their life for something so unreliable?

How could Mirabelle?

She must have read my thoughts in my expression because she added, “I mean, I know it won’t always be top of the world. There will be hard times. But none of that matters as long as we have each other.”

“Excuse me while I roll my eyes.”

“You won’t know until you find it yourself, Hudson.” She was the only one who ever spoke like I might find my own one true love. It was kind of charming, actually.

“But did you have to get married? Couldn’t you shack up together for a while first?” Like, until the euphoria faded, and she realized the ridiculousness of the notion of happily ever after.

“Nope. I have to get married.” She widened her eyes as she applied mascara to her lashes.

“Mirabelle!” So my mother was listening.

“Is there something you aren’t telling me, little sister?”

Mirabelle laughed, pausing her makeup application. “I’m not pregnant, you ass. I’m in love. And yes, I still have to get married. Because when you love someone,” she met my gaze in the mirror and said without a flicker in her confidence, “their world interests you more than your own. So much so that you disappear into them, and the only choice you have is to merge your life with theirs. Because otherwise, you cease to exist at all.”

It was more mumbo jumbo. But it struck me—somewhere deep inside me, a place that I didn’t recognize, reverberating in my bones and tingling through my nerve endings. So I let it sit and settle and didn’t refute.

A few silent moments later, it was my mother who spoke. “I couldn’t wait to marry your father. Did I ever tell you that?”

I froze, and I sensed Mirabelle did too. My mother never spoke about the past. Never anything pleasant, anyway. We’d grown up assuming that her marriage to our father was based on business. Jack’s father’s company had just gone under, but the Pierce name still held weight, and my father was an innovative thinker. The Walden family, on the other hand, had money and investments with no one to groom for takeover. Sophia Walden’s union   to Jack solved a lot of problems.

We’d never been led to believe that there was love involved.

“No, Mom, you haven’t told us,” Mirabelle said quietly, and I could feel her silently urging Sophia to go on.

“We were more in love than anyone should have the right to be. It scared my father, I think. When we announced our engagement, he nearly had a heart attack. ‘How will he ever provide for you?’ As if my trust fund didn’t give me enough money to provide for myself.”

Sophia didn’t look up as she spoke, her focus pinned on a lock of hair that refused to lay the way she wanted it to. “But Daddy took Jack out for ‘a talking to.’ And when they came back, it was decided that we could get married as long as your father took over the Walden companies. It was a win-win as far as I was concerned. Our worlds were becoming entwined in every way possible.”

I noted her use of the word worlds and realized that had been what had spurred her trip down memory lane. My mother had also moved her world to be with Jack Pierce. Or Jack had moved his world to be with her. Such a strange thing to try to comprehend. It was easier for me to imagine my parents having sex than to imagine them being in love.

“My father wanted Jack to take over as soon as we were married. Since I wanted a short engagement, Jack spent a lot of that time at the office with Dad. I didn’t see him nearly as much as I would’ve liked. Our wedding day, though.” She sighed softly. “It was the happiest day I could imagine. There Jack was, in his tux. So handsome. I kept wishing the ceremony would hurry and get finished so I could jump him.”