Chapters (48)
- TITLE PAGE
- COPYRIGHT
- CONTENTS
- PROLOGUE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margo waited until he’d left the tent before she began crying softly.
THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-SEVEN
MEREDITH
NOW
I’d barely been able to keep it together until after Thad’s wife left us alone in the den and had been crying ever since. It’d been three days since Kate announced she was thinking about moving out, and so far Scott and I still weren’t talking about his offer to let her stay indefinitely.
“Mom, you’ve got to talk to him. He can’t start making permanent plans—especially ones that include his first wife becoming like a second wife—without knowing how you really feel about it.”
“Am I overreacting?” I asked. Caleb would protect my feelings, but Thad would tell me the truth no matter what. He’d been a ruthless teenager.
“Absolutely not.” He vehemently shook his head. “It’s almost got a weird sister-wives feel to it.”
Relief washed over me. “You have no idea how glad I am to hear you say that. I wish you could have seen how he looked at me while he was comforting her the other day. It wasn’t like it was sexual or anything.” I blushed despite thirty years of frankness about sex. “It was more like he was waiting for me to join them in the hug because we were truly one big happy family, or that’s what he thinks we should try to be in the future.” I grabbed the Kleenex he’d handed me earlier and blew my nose. “Maybe I should be the one to move out.”
“What? No, Mom.”
“When we got the call about Kate, we didn’t have time to think or process anything. All we did was react. But if I had thought about it at all beforehand, I might have offered to leave while they worked things out. They deserve to have the time and space to figure things out as a family.”
“Work things out as a family?” His brown eyes flashed with anger. “Mom, you’re part of the family.”
“I know that, honey, but it doesn’t change the fact that they have a lot of stuff they need to figure out. It might make things easier for everyone if I go for a while.” I said it with much more confidence and optimism than I felt. I couldn’t help but remember how Scott had said something almost identical to Kate the other night, and he’d begged her to stay. Would he do the same for me if I said I wanted to leave?
Thad shifted gears, since we’d already been down this path more than once already. “What’s it like having a baby around again after all these years?”
“Honestly, not that big of a difference, because nobody gets to interact with the baby except Kate and Abbi.”
“At least she lets Abbi.”