Total pages in book: 140
Estimated words: 137144 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137144 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 686(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 457(@300wpm)
Clem snorted. “Welcome to my life. I never did anything to please the old witch.”
“No, but you also didn’t care, did you? You were always your own person. You were so strong, so independent. I didn’t allow myself to like this place because I knew how much Mother hated it. And I thought I needed to be just like Mother in order for her to love me. But she was never going to love me. That’s clear now. You saw me as nothing more than a pawn on her chessboard, someone to move around and manipulate.”
“You didn’t have to let yourself be manipulated, Lily. If you’d asked me for help, I would’ve been there for you. Instead, while I was stuck recovering from cancer, you slept with my boyfriend behind my back.”
“I didn’t sleep with Rick. I know you have no reason to believe me. You probably think I’m lying, but I’m not. It was a lie that Mother and Rick came up with in order to separate us, to keep us apart.”
“Yeah, well, if that’s true, why didn’t you just tell me?” Clem asked with a frown.
“I wanted to. I was coming to see you after your operation when she called me into her office and told me what Rick had told you. She said you wouldn’t want to see me, that you wouldn’t believe me. Our relationship wasn’t the best, and part of me thought that was true, but another part of me wanted to try. However, as I was leaving, she attacked me.”
“Attacked you? What are you talking about, Lily? Why would Mother attack you?”
“Because she wanted me to marry Rick. She wanted me to support him in his bid to get into the White House so she could use me for her own agenda.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t have to go along with it, Lily. You didn’t have to do everything she wanted. I get it. You wanted her approval, but it went too far. You were going to marry a man who was a complete asshole. You would have gone through with it too, wouldn’t you?”
“Yeah, I would have, and I probably would have gone on living my life in utter misery, without knowing exactly why I was doing what she wanted.”
“Why were you? It had to be more than just pleasing our mother.”
“It was,” Lily said. “It was a whole lot more, and it gets a whole lot worse. I get it if you can’t forgive me, if you don’t want anything to do with me, but I was just hoping you might listen to what I had to say. But if you want me to leave, I will. However, could you please just get that steer away from my car and find me a ladder so I can get down from here?”
Clem just grunted and stared up at her. The lamb started bouncing around her. Oh, that was seriously cute. Lily hadn’t thought herself an animal person, but the lamb was adorable.
So were the little piglets that suddenly appeared around the corner of the house. “Oh my God, Clem, you’ve got piglets? They’re so cute. They surely didn’t come from that pig, right?”
“Of course they did. We’ve got Bacon, Porkchop, Crackling, and Emma.”
“Emma?” she asked. Emma didn’t sound like a pig’s name. Not that those other names were normal names for a pig, but at least they all stuck to a theme.
“Yeah, I ran out of other names, and Emma just really liked the name Emma. Didn’t you, Emma?”
As if the pig understood what her sister was saying, it waddled toward her. Just then, a truck started coming up the drive and came to a stop behind her car. Out climbed Jaret Malone.
He was dressed in a pair of jeans and a flannel shirt that was partly unbuttoned. He looked from Clem, then up to Lily.
“Everything okay here?” Walking over to Clem, he drew her close and kissed the top of her head.
Tears filled Lily’s eyes. That was something that Harvey would have done. He would have gone straight to her and given her a kiss.
Was he worried about her?
Of course he would be.
The way she’d left hadn’t been right. She should’ve stayed and told him what happened, and that she thought she should leave. But she’d known he’d try to talk her into staying.
Still, she should really send him a message and let him know that she was all right. It was the mature thing to do.
“Hi, Lily. Are you okay up there?” Jaret asked.
“Oh, sure. I’m fine. I’m just getting a bit of this lovely Texas sunshine.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Well, maybe you’d like to get some of that Texas sunshine down here, yeah? ‘Cause you look terrified that you’re going to fall off.”
“That’s a good plan,” she said, nodding. “I should definitely get down from here. There’s just one problem; I can’t find the ladder.”