Page 97 of Tattered Edges

All the Shades of Summerwas written for me. A mother to her daughter.

I didn’t know what I would find inside, but I knew it was time I found out.

I cracked open the cover and turned to the dedication page.

To my daughter, the great love of my life.

I paused as Rory’s voice reverberated in my head.

Are you sure about this?

Turning the page, I took a deep breath and started chapter one.

Ireaditinone sitting, everything else forgotten until I’d reached the end.

And then I cried.

No—Iwept.

That’s how Rory found me later that night, in a puddle of my tears.

He didn’t say anything but came directly to me and pulled me into his arms. I curled myself against him, fisting his shirt in my hand as I let it all out.

The pain. The anger. The resentment.

The sorrow. The disappointment. The longing.

I cried until I was completely empty.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Rory asked after I’d finally fallen silent.

There was no hope in sorting through the compilation of images which now resided in my head as a result of reading my mother’s book—images conjured by a woman who knew how to use the English language to paint the most beautiful picture.All the Shades of Summerwas full of them, each one a depiction of what it meant to be a mother. And not just the kind of mother Maeve Nielsen turned out to be, but the kind of mother she wanted to be—the kind of mother she couldn’t be, no matter how hard she tried.

“She was scared,” I whispered, my voice hoarse and pathetic even to my own ears. Still, I continued, “And I—I can’t erase any of it. I can’tun-feeltwenty-five years’ worth of hurt—but I get it. I get it, Rory.”

Shifting myself until I could see into his eyes, I confessed, “I amhernow. I’m so scared. And what makes it worse is I know what it’s like—” I choked on another sob. “I know what’s it’s like to be the child of a woman that chooses fear over love—and I don’t want to be that kind of mother. I don’t want to ruin my child like that. What if I can’t do this? What if I’m just like her?”

He hesitated for a moment. Then, rather than answer me, he got up, scooped me into his arms, and carried me to his bedroom. It wasn’t until he laid me across his bed and lowered himself on top of me—pinning me so I had no place else to go, and no place else to look—that he spoke.

“I know you’re scared, sweetheart. I am, too. That doesn’t make you her.”

“But—”

“No. Listen to me—you arenotMaeve Nielsen. You will not choose fear over love. It’s not in your nature. You moved across a bloody ocean on the wishes of a father you never met. That’s not fear. You were chasinglove. And you found it in that bookstore. Even when the odds were against you, what did you do? You dug in your heels, you put in the work, and you turned that place around.”

“But—”

“I’m not finished,” he declared with a raised brow. I sealed my lips closed as he continued, “Your mother chose to go it alone. She didn’t have to. It might not have looked like a fairytale, but she didn’t have to hide you all your life.

“That’s not you. The fact that you’ve been crying over this for who knows how long—whichfucking guts me—is proof that your heart works differently than hers did.Youare not alone. Not anymore, and not ever again. That’s a choiceyoumade. That’s the kind of womanyouare.

“I don’t care what the future holds, I’m in this with you. And you can be as scared as you want to be, but I won’t have you believing the worst of yourself. Am I understood?”

I stared at him, wide-eyed. He’d never spoken to me quite like that before.

It dawned on me then just how much he hated to see me cry.

With his eyes still staring into mine unwaveringly—the rest of what he said began to seep inside of me, down to my very bones.

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