Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 84000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 84000 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
THIRTY
Sophia
Costco with my mom makes me feel twelve years old again.
“You want some gummy bears?” she asks as we pass a display of a million boxes of multicolored chewy candy.
“Urm, no, thanks.”
“Is there anything you do want?”
An honest conversation. Some kind of certainty you haven’t lied about other fundamental aspects of my childhood. The voice inside my head sounds bratty, but somewhere in the airspace over Ohio, I reverted to the kid I used to be, ready to arrive at around fourteen as soon as the airplane wheels hit the tarmac.
“Nothing I can think of,” I say. I know at some point I need to speak to my mom about how I’m feeling, but right here in the middle of Costco isn’t the time or the place.
“Well, let’s go right to the middle aisles, then.”
We’re here because Mom wants to buy holiday decorations. Because she definitely needs more of them. Our house was always decorated for the holidays, no surface or wall escaping ornaments and fake snow. We’re only a couple of weeks out, and her house looks like a winter wonderland.
I wonder if Worth decorates the brownstone. I didn’t see much of it, but the bits I saw were so pretty—so quintessentially New York—it definitely deserves a real fir, strung with multicolored lights and candy canes. Worth deserves that too, along with a magical Christmas where all his festive wishes come true. My teeth saw over my bottom lip. I know he’s hurting, and I know I’ve caused it. I just hope he doesn’t do what he promised to and wait—because I don’t know if I’ll ever be the woman he deserves. He needs a woman who can love him with her whole heart. One who trusts him. I don’t know if I’ll ever be that woman, given what my dad did.
“You take the cart,” Mom says, pushing the empty buggy toward me as she heads over to a Christmas display. “Isn’t this darling?”
I pull the cart over to where she’s standing. It’s a miniature Christmas town made up of various models with moving parts. There’s a station on one side, and a train pulling up to the station with passengers waiting on the platforms. The windows of stores either side of a snowy, old-fashioned main street are filled with Christmas presents and toys. Little figurines are scattered across the scene, some throwing snowballs, others singing carols. A pond on the other side of the railway station is full of ice-skaters moving in circles. A boy lugs a cart full of presents across a patch of grass.
It looks idyllic. If you’re an inch tall.
“I can’t wait for you to have kids. You would have loved this as a child. All three of you would.”
I snort out a laugh. “Kids? There’s no hint of that on the horizon.”
Mom pulls her attention from the Christmas scene and regards me. “What happened to that nice man who brought you to the hospital on Thanksgiving?”
It feels like someone wrapped a cloak around my heart, but instead of providing warmth, it’s tightening around it, threatening to stop its beating. “He deserves better than me,” I mumble.
“What on earth can you mean?” she asks. “You are a wonderful woman who would make an excellent wife and mother. You’re kind and loyal and clever. A little stubborn at times, but that’s not the worst trait to have. Means you don’t give up on the good stuff.”
“The good stuff?”
“You know, all your exams and stuff. You were a great student exactly because you were a little pigheaded. You never let anything beat you.”
I used to think I knew my mom almost as well as I knew myself. Now, I’m not sure if I know her at all. First putting up with my dad having another family in the next city over, and then calling me pigheaded?
“So what happened. Did you two get in a fight?”
I can’t imagine Worth ever being in a fight with anyone. Not physical or mental. He’s far too… stable. “No, but…”
“Then what? I thought he was very handsome. You two would have the prettiest babies.”
“Mom,” I groan.
“And it was so kind of him to come with you—traveling from New York to Cincinnati on Thanksgiving? I don’t know how one of you got a plane ticket, let alone two of you.”
If she thought Worth was nice before, the fact that he chartered a private plane to get me to my father’s hospital bedside would no doubt push her over the edge. She’d march me back to New York to marry him.
“He’s very kind.”
“Then what’s the problem? Why have you got it into your head that he deserves better? Who on this earth could be better than my daughter?”
I start to push the cart away and she grabs it and holds it in place, trying to catch my eye, while I look everywhere but at her.