Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
And then what happened anytime in their lives Tom used that tone, silence ensued. It was uneasy and vibrating with emotion, but none of his children said another word.
He turned to Genny but felt Mika’s hand on his arm, so he looked down to her instead.
“Cadence and I will go sit out by the pool,” she offered.
“No, really,” Genny said quickly. “As I said earlier, I’m so sorry to intrude. I didn’t see your car. Enjoy your evening. I’ll talk to Tom later.”
Tom watched Mika look at his ex-wife.
And it was soft, but firm, when she replied, “I think your family needs to talk to you now. And Cadence and I care about everyone here, so we’re happy to give you the time.” She lifted her gaze to Tom’s. “I’ll go deal with the food to keep it warm and then we’ll—”
“Actually,” Genny began, and Tom and Mika looked her way to see she’d taken two more steps in, “maybe you should stay. Maybe you should hear what I have to say too. It really isn’t just for Tom.”
Tom felt his stomach roil so badly, he worried the bile would force its way up his throat.
“Gen, let’s—” he started.
“I haven’t spoken to Duncan in two weeks,” Genny declared.
Tom blinked slowly.
“I was…”—she took another step forward—“my career was for all intents and purposes over. My children were leaving home and starting a new life. I was a middle-aged woman, and I was reminded of it everywhere I turned. By that I mean I was reminded I was unneeded. Unnecessary. Unvalued. I felt twenty years old, with just as much energy and just as many dreams. But the world deemed me invisible. Or worse, it shoved me into this room all the other washed-out, worn-out, useless females inhabited, all of us wondering how it ended so fast when we felt it had only just begun, and we had so much more to give. And you,” she said to Tom, “you had it all. Your practice. Your contract with the network. Your tennis career never had to end. It just morphed into something new. You hadn’t changed. You loved talking about tennis. You loved medicine. You were charismatic and vital and wanted, and I’d turned down a role that was offered to me playing the mother of a man who was seven years younger than me.”
“That whole Forrest Gump thing, totally gross,” Sasha groused quietly.
“I really think—” Mika began.
Genny interrupted her, and looking right in Tom’s eyes, she asked, “I lost you before I lost you, didn’t I?”
“Let’s go, Cadence,” Mika said, and Tom felt her move away from him.
“We’re all going,” Judge announced.
“I’m not—” Chloe started.
“You are, baby,” Judge decreed.
Tom felt all of them leave the room, but he kept staring at his ex-wife.
When they were gone, he said, “Because you’re dealing with something with Duncan, I’m not going to let you take responsibility for what happened with us. Whatever is going on with Duncan, that’s between you two. Don’t project that on us.”
“He was very hurt that I had the reaction I had to seeing you with Mika,” she noted.
“Then he doesn’t understand what it’s like for a woman whose husband cheated on her to see that husband, even if he’s now her former husband, with another woman, even if it isn’t the same woman,” Tom returned.
She shook her head. “It wasn’t that, Tom. It hurt you’d moved on. It hurt you were with someone else, and you looked happy. It…hurt.”
She was losing it; he knew from years of knowing her.
So he moved, took her hand and led her out of the fishbowl that was his living room down the hall into his study.
For privacy, he closed them behind the door. He then sat her in a chair, and he shoved the books aside on the coffee table so he could sit in front of her. Once there, he leaned her way and took her hands.
Her voice was rough with unshed tears when she asked, “Is Mika going to be upset that I’m here when you guys are obviously having an important dinner?”
“Mika doesn’t jump to conclusions or read anything into anything that isn’t actually there.”
“I could learn from that,” Genny muttered.
“That doesn’t mean this isn’t shit timing, Genny,” Tom pointed out. “I just don’t want whatever is happening with you and Duncan to have transference from what happened between us.”
“I still love you.”
He was so shocked, and frankly unnerved by that declaration, he let her go and sat back.
“You still love me too, I know it,” she pushed.
“We’re—”
She closed her eyes and shook her head slowly in a forlorn manner which made it bobble on her neck.
She then opened her eyes.
“What we had was forever lost, Tom. I just held on to you through it, and I hadn’t realized I hadn’t let you go.”