“Still, I’m sorry for my part in it.”
“I know. You’ve apologized and...and I’ve forgiven you.”
“Have you?”
She shifted beneath his intense regard. “Yes.”
“Then maybe that’s the problem. She doesn’t understand how you can forgive me but not your own sister.”
Olivia couldn’t stifle a bitter laugh. “Because I know my sister! Does my mother think I don’t understand what Noelle did? How badly she wanted to steal you from me? How calculated she was in her approach? I mean...was there even a baby, Kyle?”
He sighed and rubbed his chin without answering.
“You can’t say for sure, can you? You don’t even know whether she was lying about that.”
“I saw the pregnancy test results. There was a baby. I’m just not sure if she miscarried, like she claims, or...”
“It says a lot that you’re still not sure, don’t you think?”
“Look, I understand your anger. Trust me, I can get angry over Noelle, too. But we can’t escape the past and hang on to it at the same time. Noelle is my ex. Of course I’m going to have complaints about her. We wouldn’t be divorced if we could get along. What upsets me is that your relationship with her—with your whole family—is compromised, even three years later, because of me. It makes me wonder if I’ll ever be able to atone for what I did.”
“It’s not you who needs to atone! That’s the thing.”
“What we did takes two. I’m fully aware of that—and if I wasn’t, there’ve been plenty of people telling me,” he added drily.
She’d been one of them. “So what do you want me to do?”
“Give Noelle another chance. Let this Christmas be a fresh start.”
“I’d be a fool to trust her again! She would love nothing more than to do the same thing with Brandon.”
“He’d never make the same mistake I did.”
Fortunately, she could count on that. “I can’t believe you came to help my mother.”
“She wants to put her family back together. And I want the same thing, for you more than her. What good does it do to hold a grudge?”
“Who wouldn’t hold a grudge after what Noelle did?”
“That may be true, but it ended well.” He lowered his voice. “Look at what you’ve got. Look how happy you and Brandon are.”
He had a point. Without Noelle, she probably would’ve married Kyle herself, and then she would never have known what she was missing. Kyle was wonderful, but Brandon was more than she could have dreamed. At odd moments, she did feel gratitude for finding that kind of love.
“It would be easier to forgive her if she was even the slightest bit contrite,” she said. “Or if I had some hope that she wouldn’t stab me in the back again at the first opportunity.”
“She’s jealous of you. She wants what you have. Somehow, no matter what happens, no matter how hard she tries, you always end up better off.”
“And I’ve felt bad for her before. But I don’t anymore. She’s her own worst enemy.”
“I know it’s not easy to forgive someone who doesn’t deserve it.”
It was almost impossible. Especially in this situation. Olivia wasn’t sure she was capable of such a magnanimous gesture, but Kyle seemed to be suggesting that he thought she was.
What if she could let go of her resentment? What if she could put her family back together again, allow them to look forward to holiday gatherings as they used to? For her parents’ sakes if not Noelle’s?
As enraging as it had been that her mother had supported Noelle through the whole painful debacle of her marriage to Kyle, in her heart Olivia understood why she’d behaved as she did. Nancy had known that her “good” daughter would be okay in the end. It was Noelle who worried her. Noelle screwed up so much she needed someone to be on her side when the rest of the world walked out.
“Damn it,” she grumbled.
“What?”
“You know what. But I’ll think about it.”
He nodded. “Thanks. I hate the fact that...that there are any residual negative effects of what I did, especially when it comes to you.”
He still loved her. Olivia could feel it. If she could wave some magic wand that would heal his heart and free him from regret, she would. So why couldn’t she feel the same way about her sister?
There were a lot of reasons. But she needed to overcome them. She had so much, Noelle so little.
“You’ll find someone else someday,” she whispered as she gave him a brief hug and walked him to the door.
“What was that all about?”
Olivia had just said goodbye to Kyle when Lorianna appeared, dressed in a robe and wearing a towel wrapped around her head.
“Nothing important. Aren’t you going to get dressed? There’s a Christmas shop down the street that might cheer you up.”
“I was going to ask if I could borrow a blow-dryer. I forgot mine.”
“Of course. There’s one under the sink in the master.”
“I’ll get it, but you really won’t tell me who that man was? Here I’ve been blubbering on and on about my problems—ever since I got up this morning—and you’re going to keep yours all to yourself?”
Olivia considered her new friend. Maybe it would help Lorianna to know that she wasn’t the only one trying to forgive someone for something painful. Maybe that was even the reason fate had brought them together. “You’ve been wondering if you can get over the fact that your husband’s been with someone else.”
“I don’t think I can,” she said, sounding adamant. “My heart is broken. My trust is destroyed.”
“Well, I’m trying to move beyond a hurtful situation, too. I’ve just got a little more perspective on it—thanks to the passage of time.”
Lorianna studied her more closely. “What kind of situation?”
Olivia smiled. “Are you sure you don’t want to finish getting ready first? Because it’s a long story.”
Lorianna pulled off the towel and fluffed her hair with her hands. “I’ll
