Taylor Lynne: The Women of Merryton - Book Two (16 page)

“I loved the way you told
me you were pregnant. You and your friend, was it Jackie? I was so surprised to
come out of the hospital and find our car filled up with pink and blue
balloons. And that poem about conception you made up taped to my steering
wheel.”

I felt my face turn
bright red. “Maybe we should change the subject.”

“Are you embarrassed,
Taylor?” He sounded more than delighted.

I ran my fingers through
my hair. I had kept it down for the day. “It was classless and immature.”

“Maybe it wasn’t Pulitzer
Prize worthy, but I thought it was pretty cool my sweet, innocent wife could
talk dirty.”

I put my head down into
my hands. “I think it’s time to eat.”

He laughed loudly. “I
guess this means you don’t want me to recite it.”

“Do and die,” I warned. I
looked up and glared at his beaming face.

“Maybe another time,” he
smirked.

“Time to eat,” I called
out to the girls.

Easton was getting way
too much pleasure out of my discomfort. His grin never disappeared as we sat
there and waited for the girls to join us.

I looked over the spread
on the table. I hadn’t looked close before, but I was pleasantly surprised to
find it was healthy, and even more important, looked like it tasted good. “This
looks great,” I said, more to the girls than Easton. I was trying to avoid his
gaze.

“Jessie helped me,”
Easton admitted.

I should have known.

“But wait until you see
what we made for dessert,” Ashley excitedly announced.

“We made raspberry yogurt
parfaits,” Emmy said quietly.

I smiled at my little
shadow as she sat close to me. “Those are my favorite,” I informed her.

“That’s what my dad
said,” she said even more quietly.

I looked up to Easton,
who was no longer grinning, but he looked proud that he had remembered my
favorite dessert.

“Thank you,” I said to him.

“It’s the least I could
do,” he replied.

I suppose it was.

After dinner I headed
straight for the cemetery. Only the dead could know how I was feeling. I rolled
down the windows. I was plenty warm and the cool night air was a relief. If I
didn’t know better, I would have sworn that Easton stayed in his swimming
trunks the whole time I was there to show me what I had been missing out on all
those years. Little did he know, I already knew. It wasn’t like I hadn’t seen
him ever. Except that over the past fourteen years, I felt so much hate for him
that any attraction I had toward him never broke through. That, and the fact he
was married to that vile woman. And we always argued.

Now though, we were
getting along and remembering. Our memories were not serving me well. They were
becoming detrimental to my mental health.

I sat on the cool grass
in front of my mother’s grave as the sun was setting. I began absentmindedly picking
at the blades. I had this pent up energy that needed to be released. Or maybe
it was sexual tension. I hadn’t felt it in so long, I wasn’t sure. There wasn’t
another man that could make me feel like Easton, or at least I hadn’t met him
yet. I supposed that was why I had never remarried or let a man get past more
than a few dates. That, and I never wanted to involve a man in our lives while
I had Ashley at home. She had been—and still was—my priority.

“Mom,” I said in a little
voice out loud. “Things are not going how I planned. I came here to deal with
my past and move on from Easton. I’m definitely dealing with the past, or at
least remembering it a whole lot, but I find myself not wanting to move past
him. I want the life we planned so many years ago. I feel robbed and cheated.”
I paused and stared at my mother’s name. “Tell me what to do to get over him.
Please,” I begged.

I think maybe I was
talking more to God than my mom. I had to get over Easton. That was the healthy
thing to do. Ashley would be moving out before I knew it, and I wanted to find
love again. I didn’t want to grow old alone. I couldn’t have Easton hanging
over me anymore.

In the midst of my
meditation, I was interrupted by the sound of a car and headlights. I stood up
to leave and brushed the grass off my shorts. The car parked near mine. I instantly
recognized the driver.

Jessie climbed out of her
Tahoe. We both looked at each other and grinned. I began to walk toward her and
she met me halfway. It looked like she had been crying.

We met near the headstone
of one Hattie Quinn. “Everything all right?”

She wiped at her eyes.
“Yes. Just idiot husband problems, you know.”

I nodded. I did know. Or
at least I used to. Now I had idiot ex-husband issues.

The phone in her hand
rang. She looked down and rejected the call without a second thought. “I guess
I better text the man and tell him I’m safe before he calls the state patrol.”

I snickered some. “Has
that happened before?”

She looked up at me with
an evil grin. “Almost. Give me a second.” She went to work furiously texting
her husband. “He hates text messages,” she said to me, “but I should cool off
before I talk to him.” She looked up again with a smile on her face. “I could
use some company; do you want to join me?”

“Sure,” I said with a
smile. I supposed a cemetery was as good a place to talk as any. And in this
town, it may have been a safer bet. At least the dead didn’t gossip.

I followed her to her
son’s grave. My heartstrings pulled as I looked at his name engraved in stone: Carter
Nicholas Summers. I could almost physically feel my heart hurt as I placed my
hand across my chest. I couldn’t imagine losing a baby. It is a mother’s worst
nightmare.

Jessie sat down and I
joined her. I watched her lovingly look at her son’s name and run her hand
across it. “It’s almost been two years and I still think about him all the
time.”

“There’s nothing wrong
with that.”

She smiled. “That’s what
my therapist says.”

Maybe I should get one,
I thought.

Jessie’s phone rang
again. She sighed in exasperation. “This man! I love him, but he drives me
crazy sometimes.” She answered the phone curtly. “I told you I’m safe and I
would be home later.”

I heard Blake apologize
on the other end.

“Good to know,” she
responded. “We’ll talk when I get home.”

“I love you,” I heard her
husband say.

“Uh-huh,” she responded
before hanging up. She turned her phone down and looked my way with a
close-lipped smile. “He is so annoying sometimes. Why can’t he admit he’s wrong
in the first place?”

“That would be too easy,”
I responded.

She nodded and smiled
wide. “I guess there is something to say about making up.”

“Maybe that’s why then.”

“I might think that, but
we’re talking about Blake. He’s so clueless sometimes. Take today, for instance.
He and Maddie were supposed to meet me at my parents’ house for dinner, but he
got ‘sidetracked’ at some mega sports complex in Denver. Then I come home to
find Maddie hadn’t done any of her chores. She has her dad wrapped around her
little finger and can get away with almost anything, so guess who the bad guy
is? Me!” She sighed loudly. “Sorry, I’m just frustrated. Most of the time, I
love our little family, but starting off raising a teenager isn’t exactly easy.”

“I can’t imagine, especially
since the fun is only beginning. Soon some guy will be sticking his tongue down
her throat and you’ll get to watch.”

She laughed so hard she
snorted. She held her chest. “Better me than Blake. He would probably kill the
kid, no questions asked. Maddie’s already fighting us about dating. We told her
she could date when she started high school. That was last year when ninth
grade was still at the junior high. The school district went and screwed that
up by renovating the high school and moving ninth up to the high school. We are
trying to hold firm to fifteen, but she already likes a boy.”

“Is it Abby’s son?” I
asked.

“You’re observant.” She
grinned.

“I have a teenage girl,
so it’s easy to spot.”

“How old was Ashley when
you let her start dating?”

“Sixteen.”

“Why didn’t we think of
that?” she sighed. “I worry that she may have some of her mom in her. I don’t
want her to get involved with boys too soon,” Jessie lamented.

I took her hand. “This is
like the pot calling the kettle black, but try not to stress about it. Keep the
communication lines open with her and it will all work out.”

She squeezed my hand.
“The hard part is that sometimes I feel like an impostor, like I don’t count because
I’m not her real mom.”

“If I didn’t know better
and looked at you and her together, I wouldn’t be able to tell she wasn’t your
biological child. Besides, biology doesn’t make a good mom.”

“That’s what Blake and my
mom say, but now that Sabrina has passed away, I feel like Maddie has canonized
her, like her mom was a saint.”

“I’m sure as time goes on
and she gets older, she’ll see that isn’t true.”

“Hopefully we will all
survive until then. Anyway.” She waved her hand. “I’m just throwing a pity
party. Tomorrow I’ll be madly in love with both Maddie and Blake. Tell me how
it’s going with you. What brings you to the cemetery late at night?”

I picked at the grass
around me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be truthful with her or myself. I settled
with the sugar-coated truth. “Things are not how I imagined they would be when
I moved back.”

“Are you and Easton not
getting along?”

“We are—that’s the part I
didn’t imagine. I’m not really sure I want to get along with him, as messed up
as that sounds.”

“Makes sense to me.”

“Perfect. Could you
explain it to me?”

Her eyes lit up. “You
resent him, but he’s charming,” she explained.

“Yes.”

“You hate that he’s a
good guy.”

“Yes! Why can’t he be the
jerk I’ve had in my head these past several years? The jerk that let me go? Or
even the adulterer!”

Her eyes widened. “So …”
she treaded lightly, “he didn’t cheat on you?”

I’m sure everyone in this
town thought he had. That’s what I thought all these years. It made the most
sense. “Technically, no. I guess maybe he had an emotional affair. I don’t
know. I just don’t understand. Why Kathryn? And why did he let me go? And why
did I leave?”

I hung my head down. I
hadn’t meant to open up, but maybe that was part of my problem. I was perfect
at the game face and only letting people see the best of me.

Jessie looked at me
sympathetically. She touched my knee as we sat there crossed-legged, facing one
another. “I don’t have all the answers, but I do know how much he regrets not
going after you. He realizes it was a colossal mistake. As far as Kathryn goes,
she is a master manipulator. I’m sure she saw an opportunity and used her wiles
to get what she wanted. She’s like the snake in that story that convinces the
man to carry it down the cliff while promising not to bite him, but once they
are safely down, he strikes the man. The man asks why and the snake replies ‘you
knew what I was all along.’ Kathryn knows how to be her own kind of charming,
but it’s all an act. Once she had Easton, the façade went away and her true
colors came out.”

I could feel the disgust
on my face. Jessie apparently could see it.

“I’m not excusing him,
Taylor.”

I rubbed my face in my
hands. “I know I’m partially to blame. If only I would have told him the truth
about how I felt, or if I would have trusted him, but dang it, he wasn’t acting
trustworthy. I was grieving and I needed him. I felt like he left me long
before I actually left.”

We both sat there silent
for a moment.

“Maybe,” Jessie said
hesitantly. She looked at me uneasily and took a deep breath. “Maybe this is
fate giving you another shot.”

I shook my head
vigorously. “No,” I said firmly. “Easton and I resent each other too much for
that to ever be a possibility. I’m only here for Ashley’s sake. Once she
graduates, I’m going back home.”

She shrugged her
shoulders, but before she could say anything her phone rang. She looked down,
but this time she was only semi-annoyed. “Excuse me,” she said before she
answered her husband’s call.

“I’m running a bath right
now,” I could hear him say.

Even in the dark I could
see Jessie blush. She bit her lip. “I’m leaving in a few minutes.”

“Hurry home. I can’t wait
to see
all
of you. Love you,” Blake said.

“I love you,” she
admitted to him through her very red cheeks. She dropped her phone in her lap.
“I should go home.”

“Sounds like someone is
missing you.”

She stood and I followed
her lead. She hugged me tight and whispered in my ear, “Someone has been
missing you, too.”

I didn’t disagree, and be
that as it may, Easton and I wouldn’t be reconciling. I came here to get home
over him, and I was determined to do just that.