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  Although Em definitely had inherited some of her dad’s sadistic instincts.

  Like deliberately loading her stomach with red Jell-O when she knew she was going to puke all over Tracey’s now ex-mother-in-law on the cruise.

  Grace was a tiny thing compared to Emma’s five seven swimmer’s frame. Only five two, and she’d been a premie, but her physical limitations hadn’t stunted her brain or personality in the slightest.

  Grace’s parents were convinced the girls were likely going to make it long-term, based on their own family history of successful long-term marriages.

  Tracey wasn’t sure they might not be correct.

  If so, she’d be happy to have Grace as her daughter-in-law.

  She’s a hella lot smarter than me now, much less when I was that age.

  And Tracey hoped Grace—or Emma—wouldn’t feel the need to do something extreme, like move to another state right out of high school in an attempt to escape her and Brandon, or Grace’s parents.

  Chapter Three

  “You all right, Mama?”

  Tracey looked down at Grace, who wore a gallon of SPF 5,000 sunscreen, a large, floppy-brimmed hat, wrap-around sunglasses over her prescription glasses, and a loose, long-sleeved fishing guide shirt over her tank top. Her jersey-knit maxi skirt hung to her ankles, protecting her sensitive skin from the sun.

  “Yeah, just wish this line would move.” They had tackled Animal Kingdom today and were currently queued for the safari ride. Tomorrow would be Epcot, and then Sunday they’d go to the Magic Kingdom, because there wasn’t as much there the girls wanted to see.

  Emma wrapped her arms around Grace from behind, dwarfing her, and rested her chin on Grace’s shoulder. “I’m hungry. Can we eat lunch after this ride?”

  “Sure. Whatever you girls want.” Tracey knew the girls would have it slightly easier as a couple than two boys their age, because people assumed they were either sisters or best friends.

  Not that they were dating.

  They looked adorable together. She snapped a candid picture of them standing like that and texted it to Brandon.

  How’d we get so lucky?

  He responded a few minutes later.

  We hit the jackpot, I guess. :)

  All around them, happy families and couples were waiting for the ride. It’d been hard not to let her thoughts drift to the past, to the path that had led her…here.

  Right here.

  I guess I should stop feeling sorry for myself. I wouldn’t have Emma otherwise.

  She’d massively pissed off her parents by moving to Florida. Especially when she’d done it so sneakily. Her older sister, Elizabeth, had been going to college at Ringling in Sarasota. When Tracey graduated high school, her parents had paid for her to fly from California to Florida to spend the summer with Elizabeth, visiting with her in lieu of her going on a senior trip to Mexico with her classmates.

  Tracey had no desire to go to Mexico. All she’d wanted to do was get out of California. The guy she’d been dating for three years, Eric, had been accepted to college in New York. Tracey knew that was the end for them, no matter how much she loved him and how much he said he loved her. No way he’d want someone like her when he’d be surrounded by college brains, not to mention that was taking a long-distance relationship to the extreme.

  The kindest thing she’d been able to do was say good-bye to him, despite how it broke her heart and seemed to break his, too. She thought she was being “adult” by saying good-bye to him first, as friends, before it got messy and he shattered her heart and soul.

  It still hurt, but at least it hurt on her timetable instead of leaving her hanging in limbo.

  So…Florida. Here, she’d hoped she’d be able to maybe forget about him, or at least forget how much she was hurting.

  Instead, she’d fallen in love with Florida.

  Within a week, she’d secretly found herself a job and started working. Five weeks later, she moved in with a co-worker who’d become a friend, and her parents were raging at her from California, with her sister now caught in the middle.

  Except…Tracey had been nineteen. Wasn’t a damn thing any of them could do about it.

  It also meant she no longer had to live with her family nagging her about college, or the backhanded comments about her intellect, how if she’d only apply herself more, if she’d work harder, totally ignoring the fact that she had been applying herself, almost to the point of an ulcer, and if she worked any harder at school it would have worked her into a nervous breakdown.

  The expectations placed upon her by their parents, the thinly disguised insults her siblings always slung at her when she was in school and needed help with schoolwork.

  Like why did she need so much extra help when they hadn’t? Obviously she wasn’t doing something right.

  Wasn’t trying hard enough.

  Must be lazy.

  She’d sometimes wondered if she’d been accidentally switched at birth. Her, in a houseful of brains?

  Wasn’t that the most likely explanation? That, or she was just the stupid sheep in the family.

  Growing up, their parents had placed a premium on education and learning, and Tracey had failed to live up to their expectations. They’d thought she was doing it deliberately, not that it was a failure on their part as parents. Their other kids were “perfect,” so the problem couldn’t be them or their parenting. By leaving California, Tracey had defied them and rejected their immaculately sculptured life.

  Life wasn’t easy, especially with her parents refusing to support her. Which was fine with her, because other than her heartache over Eric, she felt happier than she could ever remember feeling. Maybe she was eating ramen noodles for dinner most nights, but she didn’t have to feel stupid anymore. She made new friends who accepted her for who she was.

  Her mother had finally shipped the rest of her clothes and things to her after six months.

  No note with the boxes. Not that Tracey had needed one to know how enraged they felt. They’d told her they’d pay for her college tuition if she’d just come home and attend one. Except Tracey’s SAT scores had sucked, and the three colleges she’d applied to before graduation had turned her down.

  She didn’t need to keep getting beaten over the head with her average intellect. She was smarter than that, at least.

  One night, she met a guy at a party, former schoolmate of one of her co-workers. Brandon had been intense, intelligent, hard-working.

  Handsome.

  A calm, quiet, but focused kind of guy. Reminded her a lot of Eric in his demeanor, even if they didn’t look alike.

  He wasn’t going to college because he couldn’t afford it and didn’t have the grades for a scholarship. He’d graduated high school a year before her and worked full-time at a discount warehouse, recently promoted from stock boy to checkout clerk.

  She was smart enough not to pin all her hopes on him right off the bat, but the longer they dated, the more deeply she fell in love with him, until they moved in together. She was twenty-four and he was twenty-five when they got married, and they had Emma a year later.

  He never put her down for not going to college. In fact, when he’d tried to talk her into taking classes at the community college, she’d freaked out on him even though at the time she really couldn’t adequately explain why.

  Bless his heart, he’d stopped asking her about it.

  And she’d been happy, until—

  “Mom?”

  Tracey looked up. Emma and Grace were holding hands and had moved forward with the line. Tracey quickly caught up. “Sorry. Daydreaming.”

  * * * *

  They were eating lunch when Tracey realized she had a Facebook Messenger alert.

  She opened it and wished she hadn’t. It was from her mom.

  I suppose there’s a reason you didn’t bother to tell us you were divorced?

  Tracey felt her face go red as she stared at the message. She was once again a freshman in high school, getti
ng lectured for her C-average grades and for not buckling down and studying harder.

  The implication always being she wasn’t trying hard enough, but Tracey had always felt like there was something wrong with her. Smart parents, smart siblings…

  And then her.

  “Mom? Are you all right?”

  She looked up from her phone to see Grace and Em both staring at her with identical expressions of concern.

  She quickly swiped out of the app and slipped her phone back into her pocket. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine, Mama,” Grace said. “Your face is all red.”

  Em’s blue eyes—Brandon’s blue eyes—stared at her.

  “I finally got around to talking to my father yesterday and told him I divorced Pat. My mother just messaged me.”

  If she tried to lie to the girls, not only would they see through it, it might possibly damage the fragile new bridge of trust between her and them. Besides, they were old enough to hear this.

  If it was something more sensitive, she’d simply tell them she didn’t want to talk about it.

  But she wasn’t going to lie to them.

  “Did you tell them you’re going to start taking classes?” Emma asked.

  “No!” Terror seized Tracey’s throat, tightening it, her pulse spiking. “And nobody better post anything about that on Facebook, either!”

  As one, the girls cocked their heads to the side. Would have been endearingly funny if not for the topic of discussion. “Why?” they asked in unison.

  Tracey took a sip of her water before answering. “I don’t want anyone outside our immediate family to know. I…just don’t. Okay?”

  “Dad knows,” Em said. “And I’m pretty sure Jeff and Stu know.”

  “And my parents,” Grace added.

  “That’s different. They’re immediate family.”

  Emma barely knew Tracey’s family.

  Maybe that was for the best. Thanks to Brandon, Emma was well-grounded.

  “So what is up with that, anyway?” Emma asked. “I think I’m old enough to hear this story now. How you moved to Florida and why you’re estranged from them.”

  Both girls sat forward, ready and eager to listen.

  Maybe this was part of it. Maybe this was her penance for her bad decisions with Pat. She’d been blessed with not only a daughter, but a bonus daughter, who could both run laps around her intellectually and emotionally.

  After digesting it for a moment, Tracey told them the story. They were less than three years younger than she’d been when she’d made the decision to take her future into her hands.

  The freedom she’d felt being in Florida.

  The escape.

  She concluded with leveling her gaze at them over the table. “If you ever feel like we’re putting pressure on you like that, call us out on it. Your dad’s met my family. He’s seen them in action.”

  The girls exchanged a glance and focused on her again. “So what about Eric?” Grace asked.

  Tracey choked on the swallow of water she’d been taking. “What?” she gasped.

  “Eric,” Emma said. “The guy you were dating. You broke up with him just because he was going to college. Did you keep in touch with him?”

  “No. I didn’t keep in touch with anyone from school, really. I mean, I am now, on Facebook. I’m in touch with some people I went to high school with.”

  “You should look him up, Mama,” Grace said. “See how he’s doing.”

  That thought threatened to rip the scab off a long-festering wound. “I’m only going to ask this once,” Tracey said, forcing herself to keep her tone level, steady. Not-bitchy. “Please don’t bring him up again. I do not want to talk about him. It’s…painful.”

  The girls exchanged yet another glance—Tracey wasn’t convinced they didn’t have telepathy going on or something—and nodded.

  “Yes, ma’am,” they echoed.

  “Thank you.” Tracey forced a smile even as she shoved back a wave of old pain threatening to overtop her mental banks. “Ready to hit the next ride?”

  * * * *

  When they returned to the room that night after eating dinner, they felt exhausted, and Tracey had managed to shove old thoughts about Eric out of her mind. She let the girls get their showers first, then she took her own, standing under the spray with her forehead pressed against the tile.

  She didn’t want to think about what Brandon, Jeff, and Stuart might be up to that weekend. Those kinds of thoughts would only lead to pain on her part.

  And now she couldn’t help but think about Eric again, and how much it’d hurt saying good-bye to him.

  Maybe I could look him up on Facebook.

  Or…maybe I could stick a fork in my eye. It’d be less painful.

  Besides, right now, the last thing she needed was a relationship. She had too much going on in her life, she had Emma and Grace to think about, and if she was going to better herself, she needed to pour any additional energy she had into work and school. She wanted to set a good example for her daughter.

  So far, she hadn’t.

  And there’s my answer.

  Em was on the phone, presumably with Brandon, when Tracey emerged from the bathroom. As Tracey prepared for bed, she tried to shove the rapidly expanding idea to look for Eric out of her head.

  Probably married, several kids, great job. He’d probably eked out a successful career as a stockbroker, or doing something in finance. He’d had far more drive than she did, that was for sure. Definitely far more brains.

  She’d only wanted to be…happy. A mom, a wife, able to pay the bills. She grew up seeing that just because someone was successful and smart and had money and a degree didn’t mean they were…happy.

  Or nice.

  Her family being a prime example of that.

  Of course she wanted Emma and Grace to achieve their greatest potential. But Tracey would be the first to admit her daughter had the brains in the family.

  “Did you want to talk to Dad, Mom?” Em asked.

  She waved, hoping her smile looked right. “Just say hi to all three of them for me.”

  “She says hi… Okay, love you, too. Bye.”

  Tracey set the alarm on her phone before hooking it up to her charger, and it was only after she’d climbed into bed that she realized both girls were watching her. “What?”

  “Are you okay, Mom?” Em asked.

  “Tired. Let’s get to sleep.”

  They set the TV timer and turned off the lights. Long after the girls had fallen asleep, Tracey tried not to let her thoughts drift back twenty-five years into the past, to a California beach, at night, the moon and a blanket and Steely Dan on the radio.

  And the last time she’d ever laid eyes on Eric.

  Chapter Four

  The first weekend in December, Brandon flew to Iowa with Stuart to attend Stuart’s sister’s wedding. Tracey had to work that weekend, but she spent as much of it as she could over at the men’s house every evening, trying to run interference for Jeff with Emma and Grace.

  Brandon had left the girls with strict orders not to let Jeff do anything around the house, due to his Lyme disease. Jeff had pushed himself too hard in early November and severely crashed himself as a result. Now, they all kept an eye on him to make sure he didn’t overdo things when he felt good, which would leave him regretting it later when it backfired on him and he crashed into a painful flare.

  The girls were trying to follow Brandon’s orders to the literal letter to keep Jeff from overdoing things.

  That meant poor Jeff was close to going stir-crazy.

  Saturday evening after dinner, Tracey sat talking with Jeff in the living room while Emma and Grace cleaned up the kitchen. “When are you guys putting up a tree?” she asked.

  “I hadn’t really thought about it.” He looked around. “I never put one up once I left home. I’m not even sure what Brandon’s got out in the garage for decorations.”

  “I don’t have to w
ork next Thursday. Can I come swap vehicles with you and borrow your truck? I’d like to get my Christmas stuff out of storage and bring it over here for you all to use.”

  “Oh!” Emma called out from the kitchen. “Let’s do it as a surprise for Dad and Stu!”

  “You won’t need it for your place?” Jeff asked Tracey.

  “Ruth only puts up a little tree. I have an eight-foot artificial tree, the lights, ornaments—everything. I’d rather it be used here.”

  Emma rushed out into the living room, Grace on her heels. “Please?” Em asked. “We’ll help!”

  Jeff smiled at Tracey. “I think I’m being given a hint.”

  “Please?” Tracey tried to stifle her laughter at how Emma almost looked like a little kid again, practically dancing in her excitement.

  Jeff winked at Tracey. “I suppose,” he said. “As long as someone eases up on me a little tomorrow. I’m not a total invalid.” He tipped his head back to look at Emma.

  “Yes!” Emma turned and high-fived Grace. “One Christmas wonderland, coming up!”

  Thursday morning, Tracey texted Jeff before she headed over to borrow his truck. He stepped outside to meet her, locking the door behind him.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Coming with you to help.”

  “Uh, no, you’re not. Brandon will spank me in a bad way if I let you do that.”

  He sighed. “Can I at least go with you, then? Keep you company?”

  She held her hand out for the keys. “You ride shotgun, buster. And you promise to listen to me and sit there and look pretty and not lift a finger.” Jeff was thirty-eight, only a couple of years younger than her and Brandon, and as with Stuart, he almost felt like a brother to her.

  He dropped the keys in her hand. “Deal. I need out of this house for a while, and not to a doctor appointment or Nate’s office.” Nate was not only a kinky friend of theirs, he did acupuncture and cupping treatments on Jeff to help with his pain management.