When I got back, Emma was teaching Henry his SAT vocabry words.
She said, “You really need to focus on this, sweetie. Kids your age in Manhattan are already bilingual and prepping for prep school.”
Henry was hanging on every word.
Emma smiled and ruffled his hair. “Henry’s so bright, not like-”
Henry threw his arms around Emma’s waist.
“Thank God you’re helping me, Aunt Emma. If I talked like Mom-all country and stuff-I’d be totally embarrassed when we moved back.”
William had been reading his astronomy journal, but at that, he nced up.
Then he actually smiled. This warm, approving smile.
What a picture-perfect little family moment.
I’d watched this exact scene y out before, in another lifetime.
Emma was from our town originally too.
Her dad was a drunk who beat the hell out of her mom until she died. Then some rtives from Boston swooped in and took Emma to the city for a ancy education.
For some reason, she came back to our little corner of Vermont.
At first, I was grateful to her. Henry had fallen through the ice on Miller’s Pond one winter, and Emma pulled him out.
but after that, things started getting weird.
She starteding around the house, and that’s when she saw William.
He was sitting at our kitchen table, back straight as a soldier, one hand behind him, the other moving across the page in those elegant strokes of his. Those long, clean fingers dancing across the paper.
She sidled right up to him. “William, you’re such an intellectual. Lucy’s really lucky.”
All those astronomy journals William read, the poetry collections-I never understood any of it.
He and I mostly talked about practical stuff. Summer bugs. Winter heating bills.
But Emma’sment? The little dig at me buried in there? Yeah, I caught that loud and clear.
I just stood there feeling like an idiot.
After that, Emma was at our house every other day, begging William to take a teaching job at the local school.
After that, she was always calling William in that sugary sweet voice of hers.
Whenever I’d bring lunch to the school, there was Emma, sitting right next to William.
He’d carefullydle the chicken soup I’d been simmering since dawn into Emma’s bowl first.
Henry would giggle and bounce in his seat. “Mom, Miss Green loves your cooking the best!”
Right. I’d been getting up at 5 AM to forage for morels, trading them with neighbors for fresh chickens.
I’d spent months clearing that back field by hand, picking the most tender greens.
Never took a bite for myself-and now they were using all my hard work to butter up another woman.
In my past life, I actually said thisint. Right there in front of everyone.
William’s jaw tightened, his lips pressed into this thin line, and he gave Emma this apologetic little bow. <fne30a> This update is avable on Find~Novel</fne30a>
“Miss Green, I’m sorry. My wife’s being… inappropriate.”
Like I’dmitted some unforgivable sin.
Henry was more direct: “If you won’t share with Miss Green, then I’m not eating either.”
Emma acted like she owned the ce, pulling Henry against her side.
‘Henry, what have I taught you about speaking to your mother that way?”
Henry’s bottom lip trembled as he looked up at Emma. “Sorry, Miss Green.”
mma held Henry close, meeting my eyes without an ounce of shame.
it that moment, my son, my husband-they made me feel like aplete outsider in my own life.
I was devastating.
mma was all soft curves and porcin skin.
leanwhile, I was out there every day foraging in the woods, working the fields, rough around the edges from years of hard living.
fter Henry was born, my body never quite bounced back to that girlish figure.
he three of them together-they really did look like the perfect family.
1st like in my past life, when Emma went back to Manhattan with them, nobody ever questioned whether she was Henry’s real mother.
t first Henry called her “Emma,” but she’d smile and say, “How about Aunt Emma instead?”
was onlyter that I understood her little scheme.