Proposing to Preston (The Winslow Brothers, #2)(71)

“You panicked.”

“I did.” She sighed, reaching down for her water bottle. “I ran.”

“You’re good at running.”

“I was,” she said, taking a long sip.

“Was?”

“I’m not running anymore,” she said, placing the water bottle back on the floor.

He jerked his head to look at her quickly, his eyes searching and uncertain, before turning back to the road.

“Tell me more about your mother.”

Elise took a deep breath, not as ragged this time. “She baked and cooked everything by hand. She tended a garden behind our house and always wore a floppy-brimmed hat while she worked to shield her face from the sun. In the spring and summer, she dried our clothes on a line outside and when it was really hot, she took us to a swimming hole beyond the fields, in the cool woods. She worked the farm with my father. She drank tea every evening after dinner. She called me ‘Liebling’ and still used some of the Pennsylvania Dutch expressions of her parents. She attended church on Sundays and led the alto section of worship.” Elise smiled, tears welling. “She loved singing. I think she was happiest singing. Sometimes she’d share the gift of a solo with our congregation.”

“Like you,” said Preston.

“Not at all like me!”

“Like you,” he repeated evenly. “Performing.”

“It wasn’t a performance. It was worship.”

“It was self-expression,” he said. “It was joy in singing. It was leading a whole section of worship or singing solo because she was talented and comfortable. It wasn’t on a stage and it was for an audience of one, but surely you see the similarities.”

Elise furrowed her eyebrows, thinking about this. Was it possible that she and her mother had had more in common than she’d long thought? Sarah had sung to God and Elise acted for millions, but, yes, they both found pleasure in performing.

“What else?” asked Preston.

“She…she believed in discipline. In hard work and commitment. She didn’t make excuses. She woke up every morning at five and attacked the day. Cooking, cleaning, milking, making pies for the fellowship group, mending clothes, knitting little caps for the babies at the hospital, helping my father on the farm. She took such joy in her work.”

“Like you,” said Preston again.

“No,” said Elise, turning to him. “No, not at all like me. She worked on our farm. She worked for our food and our clothes and for ministry—”

“Discipline, no excuses, commitment…joy in her work? You don’t hear yourself in that description? You don’t see that you could just as easily be talking about yourself?”

“I…” She started crying again, sobbing with regret and for her blindness and for the possibility that she’d actually been emulating the woman she’d been so desperately trying to escape. “Pres, am I like her?”

“I never knew her,” he said. “But it sounds like it…to me.”

“But I never wanted that: the farm life, the small community, the—”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “We can’t escape our past. We can’t run away from it. It’s in our blood. It’s in our bones. You made a lot of different choices, Elise, but it was unavoidable that you’d create your own version of some of hers. Your mother was happiest performing, happiest working. So are you. You just took it somewhere else.”

“Stop the car,” she said.

He jerked his head to look at her in confusion.

“We’re on the highway. I can’t just—”

“Pull over,” she demanded, because she had promised herself honesty, and she hadn’t been honest yet.

He slowed down gradually, finally rolling onto the shoulder, stopping the car and turning to look at her.

“I’m sorry for hurting you,” she said.

“I’ve accepted your apology.”

“Forgive me.”

“I do.”

“You understand why I left you?”

“Yes.”

“Then this is the truth you need to know: I’m not happiest performing and working. Not anymore.”

He searched her face, his brows furrowed, trying to understand.

“Preston, I was happiest with you.”

He gasped softly, the muscles of his jaw clenching as he stared back at her in the dim light of the car.

Be honest. Be honest. Be honest.

“I loved you when I married you. I loved you when I left you in New York. I loved you when I pushed you away in L.A.. I loved you every moment I spent apart from you. And I love you now. Right this minute, in this car, on the side of the highway, I love you.”

His eyes widened, shocked and distraught. His lips parted and his hands curled into fists around the steering wheel. She gulped softly, reaching deep for courage, and continued.

“I’m not asking you for anything. I don’t expect anything. But the truth is that I’m still in love with you,” she said, “and I need you to know that.”

***

Preston wanted to believe her.

With every cell in his body, he was desperate to believe her.

He’d dreamed of these words more times than he could count. They’d tortured him, giving him false hope, and imprisoning his heart in a cell of useless longing.