Page 42 of Marry Me in Rome

My chest could hardly contain the pain of tonight’s events. First Matteo, and now Dad trying to tell me my mom was a liar and a cheat. “I don’t want to know.”

“I don’t want to tell you, either. Better to remember her as a victim of her horrible ex-husband, like everyone else does.” He took a sip of wine and wiped his mouth on his sleeve. “Regardless, she can’t stop me from having a relationship with you now.”

We had no relationship, and I couldn’t be sure he wasn’t lying about all of this. “Are you really going to contact Alexis and Kennedy?”

“Soon enough. I knew you’d handle it the best, since you always were the most easygoing of the bunch. You remember how it was. You and me, best buddies.”

I wanted to shove my plate away and never eat again. “You abandoned me on my birthday.”

He ducked his head. “Yeah, and I can’t tell you how sorry I am for that. Didn’t mean to ruin your birthday with what happened. I can’t take it back, but I want to celebrate yourbirthdays with you going forward. It’s unfair that we both missed out on that.”

Yeah, right. I couldn’t imagine Dad setting a birthday cake in front of me, all lit with candles, any more than I could imagine Matteo walking through that door and begging me to come back. Adulthood may be complicated, but it was also simple too.

“You know what’s unfair?” I folded my arms. “Having a father who’s close one day and then leaves you behind the next. Who then completely ignores the fact that you exist forten yearsand replaces you with the boys he always wanted. Who shows up one day on your vacation and tries to blame the whole thing on your mom when she’s the one who actually cared enough to stay.”

“Honey, I tried.”

“Is that what trying looks like? Packing a bag and stealing a daughter?”

“Alexis wanted to come with me. She was angry at Mom for what she did. Frankly, so was I. In my grief, I couldn’t see another way out.”

“You know what? Fine.” I slapped the table and leaned forward. “Obviously you want to tell me what she did. So tell me.” I didn’t want to hear it from his lips, but the only person who could really make me understand was no longer around.

He mirrored my movement, leaning over his plate of pizza with a smirk. “When I got home from work one day, Alexis was crying on the front porch. Mom had brought her to soccer practice early. When she arrived, her coach disappeared. She found them kissing behind a tree.”

I felt like I’d been punched in the face. An affair was always in the back of my mind, but having it confirmed like this slammed everything into perspective. “Mom and Alexis’s soccer coach. You’re sure?”

“I went to confront him that night. He didn’t deny it. Apparently they dated in high school, and she had some sob story about being unhappy in her marriage or whatever. He swore that was the first and only time, that he initiated it, that she cut it off and told him to leave her alone. Said she seemed so vulnerable, he couldn’t help himself. I almost punched him in the nose then and there for lying. Who knows how many months that went on before they got caught?”

Or the coach could have been telling the truth—maybe they had a moment of closeness and the man took advantage of it as some men did. Either way, Dad’s story may have set himself up as the jilted husband, but it also explained Mom’s guilty behavior afterward. That much I remembered. My brain accepted it all, filing it away and looking backward at my past in a new light.

Knowing didn’t make me feel any better.

“You should havetoldme,” I said. “I was fourteen, not four. I would have understood. I might have even come with you.”

He paused, and I detected something new in his eyes.

Guilt.

In that moment, I knew. “That’s why, isn’t it? You didn’t tell me and Kennedy because we might have come with you. It wasn’t that you wanted to keep our family together. You wanted a fresh start.”

He swallowed and fixed his gaze on a billboard across the street. “Not exactly.”

Another thought hit me, and my stomach flipped at the very horror of it. “You wanted to punish Mom. Leaving her with two children meant she would mourn the third for the rest of her life.” And she had done exactly that. “Besides, with two daughters relying on her financially, she’d be too busy and overwhelmed to pursue another relationship.” And she never had. Not with the soccer coach, not with anyone.

Dad’s eyes returned and he studied me, looking disappointed. “You and I were close once. I thought that you, of any of them, would understand.”

“Because I’m the youngest and therefore easiest to manipulate.”

He said nothing.

“Yeah,” I whispered. “That’s what I thought.” I stood and started to walk away.

“Look, Jillie?—”

I whirled on him. “Don’t call me that. My nickname is for family only.”

“What family?” He sounded incredulous. “Your two sisters? Your mother is gone. I watched the funeral online and everyone weeping, like she was an angel in disguise. Even your grandfather, with all his secret millions he refused to let anyone else touch.”

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