Emma’s gaze snapped back to Jules, and she stood up straighter. “Okay, you lost me. If you do love him, and you can see a future with him, why can’t you marry him?”
Jules made a low noise in the back of her throat. “Because if I marry him, then that means I’m committing myself to him, possibly for life, and who knows what could happen? I don’t even know how people make those kinds of promises when life is so unpredictable.”
“I’m not sure I’m following…”
Jules had always seemed fearless and confident in the pursuit of what she wanted.
Emma was seeing a side of her that she never had before, and it worried her.
What was really holding her daughter back from going after everything she wanted?
“You and Dad got married, and you were happy,” Jules continued before suddenly rising to her feet. She began to pace, the words coming more quickly as she breathed heavily. “Even though Grandma and Grandpa didn’t approve, you didn’t give up on each other, and you built this whole life together—”
Emma’s stomach dipped. “Honey, if this is about your grandparents, that was completely different.”
Jules glanced over her shoulders but didn’t stop pacing. “It’s not. Not entirely, at least. My point is, you and Dad had all these plans, and you had me, and you had these plans for me, and then one day, they just…they just ended.”
Silence stretched between them.
“You woke up one day, and you had no idea that it was going to be your last day together, and it wrecked you,” Jules finished, her voice cracking toward the end. “I know you did your best to pick up the pieces and make sure I had everything I needed, and I loved you even more for it, but I also saw how hard it was. Losing Dad nearly destroyed you. You almost lost yourself.”
Emma opened and closed her mouth several times, but her thoughts were all scrambling on top of each other.
Jules wasn’t wrong.
For a whole year, Emma had wandered through their house like a ghost, searching for Andrew behind every corner and on every street intersection. It had taken a long time for her not to burst into tears every morning when she woke up and reached for him. All those endless nights she’d bury her face in the pillow and rock herself to sleep still left a dull ache in the center of her chest.
But it felt like a lifetime ago.
Like she was another person then.
Emma wasn’t proud of how she’d handled the first few months without her husband, but she’d always assumed she’d hid it well.
Or at least, that was what she’d told herself.
It had been seven years since she laid Andrew to rest in the ground, and she hadn’t allowed herself to stop.
Since then, she’d kept moving, always looking forward with one foot out the door.
She’d almost made it out too.
In her wildest dreams, she never imagined that pressing on meant leaving Jules behind to clean up the debris.
Why hadn’t she considered the effect on her daughter?
Poor Jules.
“Baby, I know you’re scared, and I’m not saying losing your dad wasn’t hard.” Emma stepped in front of Jules and waited for her to stop. “But loss is an unfortunate part of life. Anything worth having is worth losing.”
Jules searched her mother’s face, eyes wide and unflinching. “How can you say that? It almost ruined you.”
“But it didn’t.” Emma took both of Jules’s hands and squeezed. “Because I didn’t let it. You can’t spend your life with one foot out the door, always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll miss out on a lot of things. Now, if you want to turn Kyle down because you don’t want a future with him, that’s one thing. But if you’re doing this to keep yourself from getting hurt, you’ll end up missing out on a lot. I don’t want that for you, and I’m sure your dad wouldn’t have wanted it either.”
Tears spilled out of Jules’s eyes. “I just miss him so much.”
