Page 151 of These Summer Storms

They shared a little laugh, and Alice tilted her head back, looking at the ceiling, somewhere in the darkness above. “Fuck,” she whispered. “Hedied.”

Silence. And then, Emily filled it. “It’s not his secret anymore. Or mine, or yours.” She tilted her head toward the stairs leading to the upper floors of the house, where she imagined their siblings were. “Someday, they’ll know it, too.”

“Sooner, rather than later,” Alice said.

“Probably.”

“Maybe not tonight, though.”

Definitely not. “Greta doesn’t need it tonight.” A pause. “She really slapped Mom?”

“She really did.” Alice whispered it, like she couldn’t quite believe what she’d seen.

“God. Greta.” Emily reached for the ice cream, almost soup now. “Did you know?”

“No.” Alice shook her head, sadness falling over her face. “She’d never tell us. I wish she would have.”

“I wish she’d made a break for it with Tony,” Claudia interjected.

“Yes! Me, too!” Alice replied, slapping her palms to the table.

As if on cue, footsteps sounded on the stairs, precise and even. Everyone straightened.

Elisabeth appeared, lantern in hand, tiny votive barely hanging on. Her gaze tracked over them all, and Emily resisted the urge to hide the dirty spoon in front of her. She was pissed at her mother, wasn’t she?

Except, she wasn’t.

What was vulnerability on everyone else was cold anger on Elisabeth Storm, and Emily had spent a lifetime learning it. “Hi, Mom.”

Elisabeth looked to Claudia, then Alice. “I’d like to speak to Emily, if you don’t mind.”

They did not move, and Emily loved them both a little more for that, especially when she nodded them off, and Claudia reached across the table to squeeze her hand while Alice leaned down to press an enormous kiss to her cheek. “I love you.”

How long had it been since someone in this family had said those words?

Maybe things could change.

Probably not, but the work, Emily’s work, would always be to hold hope.

Elisabeth slid into the seat across from Emily, her gaze settling on the candle there. Emily wondered what it must be like, keeping every thought, every response, positive or negative, hidden from the world.

Digging deep for her best meditative practice, Emily sat in stillness, listening to the rain, and waited for her mother to begin.

Realizing she wasn’t going to be let off the hook, Elisabeth said, “I suppose you have questions.”

Only a million of them. “Dad told me a lot of it.”

Elisabeth’s face went slack. “He had no right to—”

No. They weren’t doing that.Emily held up her hands. “He had every right to tell me who my birth father was, Mom. What he didn’t have the right to tell me was why. Or how. Those…they’re your secrets.”

“I don’t want to discuss them.”

Emily nodded. “And I won’t ask.” She wasn’t ready to hear them. Not this week, not when she was raw with the loss of the man who’d been the only father she’d ever known, for better or worse.

“From the moment he found out about you,” Elisabeth said, the words stilted and uncomfortable, “Franklin was your father.”

She knew her mother well enough to accept that it was the closest thing she’d ever get to an apology, so Emily allowed herself a tiny win, a response that suggested the apology had been tendered. “Thank you.”