AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Erica shrugged. “You have plenty of cause, don’t get me wrong. I’m just pointing out that the emotion is obviously getting to you. I’m not saying I would handle it better. I wouldn’t. For the record, you’re not hurting Summer. If you were, I’d be on you in a hot second. There’s just a lot of shit right now.”
Allison blinked as if holding back tears. “You’re right. There is. Sometimes it’s more than I can deal with.”
Erica eyed her glass but didn’t pick it up. Instead she said, “I’ll take care of the retainer. I want to meet the guy before I hand over the check, but unless he’s a moron, I’ll pay for Peter’s lawyer.”
The tears were immediate. Allison went from wide-eyed to choking sobs in less than two seconds. Erica grabbed her glass, figuring they could be there a while.
“You c-can’t,” Allison said, her voice thick with emotion. “You’ve d-done so much. You don’t even know me.”
“I know you better than I did. Besides, we’re sort of family.” A weird, twisted kind of truth, but there was no denying that they were linked through circumstances and her very idealistic daughter.
Erica got up and walked to the half bath, where she snagged a box of tissues and gave them to Allison. The other woman wiped her face and blew her nose.
“I want to say no, but I can’t. I need the money.”
“You also need to keep your car. Don’t go selling your only source of transportation just because Peter’s in jail. He did this to himself and to you. If he has to sit there a few weeks longer, then that’s on him.” She paused, thinking she might have gone too far. “Of course that’s easy for me to say. I’m not married to him anymore.”
Allison stared at her. “He said so many awful things about you. He said you were mean and thoughtless and only cared about business, but that’s not true at all. You’re the most caring, generous person I know.”
Erica chose to focus on feeling uncomfortable with the praise rather than dealing with the ugly things Peter had said about her. They weren’t a surprise but that didn’t mean they didn’t hurt.
“These are special circumstances,” she said lightly. “Don’t judge me by them.”
Allison shook her head. “I could never figure out how if you were so terrible, your daughter was so sweet.”
“Summer’s her own person. I can’t take credit for her.”
“You’re wrong. She’s the way she is because of you. I wish I’d known that sooner.”
“I’m not the good guy here,” Erica protested, reaching for her wine. “I’m the one who screwed up the marriage with Peter. I pushed him to start his own business when I was pretty sure he didn’t want to.” She paused, wondering how much truth to tell.
“I didn’t like that he worked for someone else. I never told him that, but I wanted him to be an entrepreneur like me. Driven and successful.” She stared at her glass rather than at Allison. “It was never who he was and he resented me for pushing him.”
“You’re wrong.” Allison shifted into a slightly more upright position. “He loves his business. He told me so many times. He was proud to own it and take care of his family.”
“He was proud to own it when he could take care of you,” Erica told her. “Then it was different because he was happy. You’re his princess. It wasn’t like that with me.”
She remembered how he’d fallen to his knees and begged her to help his wife. Something she still had trouble thinking about without the gut-twisting truth of knowing he had never loved her like that.
“Why did you two split up?” Allison winced. “Is that too personal a question?”
“Oh, I think we’ve moved well beyond things being too personal.” She paused, not sure how to answer, only to realize she couldn’t answer because she didn’t know.
“He never told me why,” she admitted. “One day he told me he wasn’t happy and he wanted out. There was no discussion, no explanation, no offer to get counseling. He was done and he wanted to leave.” She faked a smile. “I had no idea he was unhappy, so it was a shock to me.”
Allison stared at her. “So you were still in love with him?”
Ah, yes. That. “I was in love with who I wanted him to be. Not who he was. I see that now. We both wanted our partner to be different. Love for us was more like a theory.”
Which was total crap because of course she’d still been in love with Peter. He was her husband and she’d assumed they would be together forever. Yet one more time when she’d been wrong.
But saying that would upset Allison and wasn’t her life spiraling enough already?
She rose. “Finish your movie. I’m going upstairs to clear my calendar for tomorrow morning. We’ll drop Jackson off at day care and go see this lawyer together.”
“I can’t thank you enough.”
Erica held up her hand. “No more thanks. We had a deal.” She softened the words with a smile. “Have a good night.”
