Page 89 of Acceptance
“If you’re in love with me, why would you want me to change?”
Standing, she lifts her hands in surrender. “This is a pointless conversation to have. Good luck with Margaret. I’ve been praying for her. I can’t even imagine what she must be feeling right now.”
“Wait,” he calls as she opens the door to her house. “Can I come inside? We need to talk, and I’d rather not do it in the front yard.”
Emma studies him for a few moments, thinking about whether or not she should allow him into her house, before she nods. If he can just get her alone in private, he knows he can convince her to come back. He’s done it before.
“Coffee?”
“No, thank you,” he says. “I love you, Emma. I love you so much, I feel empty without you.”
“Do you love Lex?”
This takes him by surprise. “Of course, I do.”
“Then tell me what happened at her fifteenth birthday party. The last birthday she had here before moving to Arizona with me.”
“You threw her a party, and Zane wasn’t happy. He threw a fit.”
Eyebrows high, she scoffs. “A fit?”
“Yeah, he threw a fit. Shouted and screamed.”
“That, right there? That’s the reason we can’t be together.”
“Because Zane threw a tantrum at Lex’s birthday party twenty years ago?”
She sighs and shakes her head. “He didn’tthrow a fit, Nash. He destroyed her party. The cake I ordered with a picture of all of us, one of the three we’d taken, ended up against the wall. Every gift anyone brought her ended up broken before she had a chance to open them. He flipped the food and drink table over, and if the damned clubhouse wasn’t brown, the walls would have been stained red.”
Thinking back to that time, he tries to remember what Emma describes. “That’s not how I remember it.”
“You rewrite history for Zane until you don’t know fact from fiction. And nothing anyone tells you changes your mind.”
“Emma—”
“When I got after you for not reprimanding him for it, you told me that it was my fault. I knew how Zane would react, and I did it anyway.”
Running a hand over his face, he tries to understand what she’s getting at. “If you knew he wouldn’t like it, why did you do it?”
“Because Lex deserves to be celebrated, too!” she screams. “Your daughter means something, Nash. Your son is not more important than our daughter, no matter what he’s been through in his life.”
“I never said he’s more important.”
Her frustrated scream makes him flinch as it pierces the air. “What would you have suggested we do for her birthday, then? If she’s important, too, what should we have done?”
“We could have had a nice, quiet dinner out, just the three of us. Or a few of her friends could have joined.”
“And what did you do for Zane every year?”
“We threw a party at the clubhouse.”
Emma stares at him with expectation, and she waits. He says nothing, and she clenches her fists. “Why does Zane deserve a party when Lex only deserves a quiet dinner with only the three of us?”
“Because he was going to be a member—”
“Our daughter is part of the club, too!” she interrupts. “She’s married to the fucking President, for God’s sake.”
“And that’s exactly how she got Zane kicked out of his own club.”
