Page 101 of Kiss and Tell

Levi was the oldest of her cousins. He’d been sixteen when her parents died, so he probably knew and remembered them the best. She was curious how much he knew about their divorce.

“My mom certainly didn’t.” She would never have said such a thing if she weren’t feeling so low, so lost.

“Do you remember a lot about that?” Levi asked, cautiously. “You were pretty young.”

Lucy wasn’t sure why she’d opened this door, but now that she had, she didn’t have the strength to close it again. “I remember them fighting a lot. How she left for a year. How happy I was when she came back.”

The sympathy in Levi’s gaze told her that he knew all of that. Lucy had been a mama’s girl. Her early memories of her childhood filled with images of her trailing along in her mother’s wake, listening to her stories, longing to be just like her.

“The night before…” Lucy swallowed heavily. “Before they died, they had a bad fight. The worst one I’d ever heard. Usually when they got like that, I’d grab the girls and go to Grandma’s or to your house, but Nora, Mila, and Remi were already in bed. Mom and Dad were screaming at each other. I couldn’t make out a lot of the words, but I heard my name. I always wondered, always worried that maybe I was the reason they?—”

“No,” Levi said loudly. “No. It wasn’t anything like that.” Then he rubbed his chin, his brows furrowed. Lucy got the sense he was debating over whether to tell her more.

“What do you know?” she asked.

“I didn’t know you thought that, Lu. I’m sorry. Maybe I should have told you. Your dad came to see mine the morning…” Levi sighed before saying, “That last morning. I overheard them talking. Uncle Ronnie said that your mom wanted a divorce and she wanted custody of you.”

“Me? Just me?”

“Mila’s been my mom’s shadow since birth, and there was no denying, even back then, that Remi and Nora would wither away and die if they weren’t breathing this farm air.”

Lucy smiled, though her heart was aching. Levi’s description of her younger sisters was accurate. None of them would ever call another place home. Stormy Weather Farm was it for them. They’d never felt trapped here.

Maybe this would all be easier if anyone else in the family had ever left the farm, but they’d all remained, let their roots sink deep into the soil. It made her feel like the cuckoo bird who’d been left in someone else’s nest.

“You and your mom…” Levi paused.

Lucy batted away a stray tear. “She was my idol. My world. I wanted to be her when I grew up. And then she…”

“She left.”

Lucy nodded. These were memories she’d purposely shut away for years because she couldn’t understand how even now, she could still love her mother so much, miss her so intensely after she’d willingly walked away from them, fromher.

“Uncle Ronnie wanted to fight for you,” Levi continued. “Couldn’t imagine letting you go. But he was worried that maybe?—”

“I’d want to go with Mom.”

“You were only ten, Lu. If it had come to that… Well, it would have been a really shitty decision for a kid to have to make.”

“I would have stayed.”

The second she said the words, she knew they were a lie.

Levi gave her a sad smile. “I’m not so sure you would have.”

Lucy lowered her head, staring at the ground until Levi lifted it up with a calloused finger under her chin.

“And that would have been okay,” he said. “You’re not tied here, Lu.”

She knew that. Or at least, she wanted to.

God. She needed to put this new information about her mom away for now because, holy fuck…it was way too much to unpack. Especially when she was already on the verge of a complete meltdown, thanks to zero sleep and a severely broken heart.

Lucy didn’t know how to respond to any of it, so instead, she just held on to the lie. “This is home. I’m happy to be back.”

Levi looked like he wanted to push the issue, but something in her face must have told him she was too close to the edge because he backed away. And since he was wonderful, he changed the subject.

Unfortunately, the one he chose didn’t lighten the mood like he clearly expected. “You know, we’ve all got a pool going.”

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