Page 49 of Release

Plus she was terrified of losing the love and support of her family.

Fuck themwas my opinion, but she loved them.

Not that they deserved Ellen. She was too fucking good for them.

I was the best friend, though, throughout her courtship and marriage. I threw her a bridal shower. I smiled and laughed and said all the right words, even as I was dying inside. I was her maid of honor at her wedding to the man who stole her from me.

The better man won, though, so to speak. George could make her dreams come true. Nothing I said or did would have ever released her from her fear of her family’s wrath, even though we managed to relieve each other of our guilt over past sins.

I graciously and eagerly accepted the few crumbs thrown my way, while secretly praying to discover the man’s dark side so I could expose it.

Crumbs, like the Saturday morning she came by my place and told me even before she told George that she was pregnant with Logan. In fact, I knew before George did each time that she was pregnant, although she didn’t tell him that.

I probably won’t, either. Not unless he ever does something to really piss me off.

My girl didn’t want him to know about us, and while I didn’t agree with that, I respected her wishes. She did her best with the emotional tools she had. Which wasn’t necessarily the best, but she was a damned fantastic mom.

I threw her baby showers each time, and I became an adopted aunt and godmother to two blue-eyed boys who were just as handsome as their motherfucking father, and to a green-eyed little girl who was as heartbreakingly beautiful as her mother.

You know something? Part of me wants to kick myself. Because I love those kids. I’d die for them. I’d sure as hell kill for them.

What if Ihadwanted kids? Could I have talked Ellen into IVF? Still, it was before the marriage ban fell, so we couldn’t have gotten married back then. But could I have talked her around that?

Woulda.

Coulda.

Fucking shoulda.

It doesn’t matter now, either way. I got my tubes tied years ago. My doctor tried to tell me I might change my mind one day, that I might find a man and get married.

After I made his face go pale telling him a fraction of the trauma I survived in my childhood, he changed his mind and scheduled me to have the procedure two days later.

I don’t need a fucking man telling me what to do with my goddamned body, thank you very much. And once Ellen started having kids, they were the only kids I needed in my life.

George begged me to be in the delivery room for every birth, because he was afraid he would faint or puke and he wanted me there to be Ellen’s rock in case he failed her. He was always terrified he’d let her down. I quit counting how many times he gut-checked himself with me, wanting to be the best husband and father he could be.

How could I ever truly hate a guy who could admit his flaws like that?

Something else George doesn’t know is I named all three of his kids.

Maybe it makes me pitiful, I don’t know. Ellen did the best she could with the soul she had. Her parents made her terrified of losing their love—no great loss there, in my opinion—and it was stronger than everything else. It wasn’t until Logan was nine or ten that Ellen finally realized her parents and sisters didn’t hold the moral high ground. That was when she quit being their emotional punching bag.

Something George didn’t know happened, because they were smart enough never to pull that shit around him.

But protecting her kids became her focus, so she distanced herself from her family and their toxic religiosity.

Which was why they were so pissed off at me when I told them they didn’t get a motherfucking say in organizing the first memorial, despite them assuming they were going to control everything. It wasimmenselysatisfying to me to tell them that, if they pissed me off, they’d be disinvited, because I held the powers of attorney.

That they also weren’t getting jack shit in the wills.

Man, Ireallyenjoyed delivering that fucking news. They believed they’d hit the goddamned Powerball, never mind there were three kids to think of. They’d felt certain Ellen was going to make it rain money on them in their wills.

It was bitter satisfaction, but satisfaction none the less. Declan held me after that meeting, when I managed to keep stone-cold bitch face in place until later.

Then I broke down sobbing once we were alone at my house.

And then… The night before the memorial.