Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 116759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116759 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
“No, I will not. Get out of this house, Paul.”
“This house is mine!” he yelled back, his face suddenly mottled with rage. “Just because you’ve allowed that bitch to twist your mind with her lies doesn’t mean I get to lose everything!”
I tensed at this sudden window into what was between them. “What’s he talking about?” I asked Mum.
Her face bleached of color. “Nothing.” She primly sat back down. “You can stay if you’ll shut up.”
“Shut up?” Dad laughed bitterly. “Why? Hmm?” He turned to us now. “Do you want to know why your mother upended all of our lives?”
“Paul—”
“Because Gemma—”
“Paul, don’t—”
“An old flame of mine, bumped into your mother last winter and said, I quote, ‘It’s awfully good of you to forgive Paul for our little affair when we were younger.’”
Betrayal and anger rushed through me. “You didn’t?”
Dad slapped a hand on the table, so hard cutlery bounced. “I didn’t! I dated that witch before I met your mother! Nothing happened after!”
“What about the letter? That letter you always told me meant nothing!” Mum cried.
“Because it did!” Dad pushed back from the table, veins popping in his head, spittle flying from his mouth as he roared, “I wrote that letter before I even met you! When I thought Gemma was a good person!”
“Dad, stop yelling,” I demanded quietly.
“Stop yelling?” he huffed. “Your mother chose to believe that woman’s lies over your father. She threw me out of my own life without a discussion. But yes, let’s mind ourselves not to yell about it.” He pushed his chair hard against the table, making Juno and my mother flinch. Then he glared at Mum. “I’m taking my house back. If you want to leave, you know where the door is.” With that, he stomped upstairs.
Stunned, I turned to Mum. Tears rolled down her cheeks. I pushed my chair back and rounded the table to pull my mother into my arms. “It’s okay,” I soothed as she clung to me.
“It’s not okay.” Juno’s chair scraped with a squeal against the floor as she stood.
She glowered at Mum.
“Juno—”
My sister ignored my warning tone as Mum pulled from my arms to look at her.
“Please do not tell me that you left Dad based on the word of a woman who clearly has ulterior motives?”
Mum tensed in my arms. “Don’t use that tone, Juno Thorne. You have no idea what you’re talking about. This goes way back.”
“Then explain it to me or I will never talk to you again.”
“Juno,” I growled her name in outrage.
“No. I’m done, Sebastian. If I don’t get answers right now, I’m walking out of here and never coming back.”
Mum straightened, pulling out of my embrace. “Very well.” Her tone was brittle. “Before your father and I married, we split up for a time. I found letters between him and Gemma, his ex-girlfriend.”
“Are we talking about Gemma Hartwright?” Juno gaped.
Mum nodded.
My sister and I exchanged a look. Suddenly, everything was a bit clearer. Gemma Hartwright was married to a wealthy London financier. She ran in our parents’ circle, but Mum had been very vocal about how much she didn’t like her. Dad always seemed weirdly unfriendly around her too. I remember being at a party when I was fifteen and Mrs. Hartwright telling me I was handsome and Mum pulling me away like the woman had tried to solicit me for sex.
“The letters between your father and Gemma were love letters. Then I caught him in a lie. He’d told me he couldn’t see me one evening because he was working. So, I went out in the city with friends, and he was there with Gemma. We split up. But then he told me that Gemma had manipulated him. That she’d informed him her mother died and she needed someone to talk to. It turned out to be a lie, a manipulation to try to get him to talk to her so she could win him back. I was young and in love, so I believed him.
“Then last spring, I was in London and bumped into Gemma. She let it slip that they did have an affair. That your father was confused about whether he was ready to move on from her. He chose me, she said.”
Juno’s cheeks tinged with red, and her eyes blazed with anger. “And you believed that lying, pretentious hag? Everything about that woman is fake, Mother!”
“You don’t understand.” Mum sobbed. I reached for her again and she clung to me as she explained through her tears. “You don’t understand what it’s like to have these doubts living in the back of your mind for years. To love someone as much as I love your father and wonder if the person you trust most is capable of deceiving you so badly. And why would she lie after all these years? No one would do that!”