“Yes.” Another tear trickled down my cheek. My voice cracked as I sucked in a deep breath. “I loved working for Mark. I loved Adventura. I want to go back. Bethie, what if I’ve messed everything up?”
“It’s not too late for love. Which is fortunate, because you’re in love with JJ Bailey.”
I scoffed.
She glared at me, one finger raised. “Hey! Don’t turn cynic on me now, Lizbeth. You didn’t grow up your entire life believing in love just to let it go the first time it tests you. Don’t you dare try to deny it. You love him, Lizbeth. You always have. That lovesick expression on your face has only gotten worse.”
She was right. Brutally right. For all my declarations of being a romantic, I’d given up on it the moment the darkness descended. And I did love him, which made this even worse.
“You’re right,” I mumbled. “I do love him.”
“Things have been tough for you lately, and I’m sorry that you’ve lost so much. But can you see it?” she asked. “Can you see how loved and blessed you are?”
It took the rest of my courage to meet her eyes. How hadn’t I seen it? How could I have been such a fool? I had so much that Mama had never had.
I nodded.
“Good.” She dropped her arms back to her side. “Now, get all the ugly out. Tell me the hard stuff with JJ.”
With a wobbly voice, I obeyed her command. From start to finish, we stood in the wreckage while I laid every moment out. All the time with JJ at Adventura. The small touches. His warm gaze. The sense of betrayal in his eyes when I tried unsuccessfully to explain why I wasn’t good for him. My fear of being like Mama. Of turning JJ into Dad.
And finally, I heard myself say it.
“I don’t want to end up alone, Bethie,” I whispered. Fat, hot tears dropped down my cheeks. “If I end up like Mama, I’ll be alone. I just want someone to love me. I just want to know they’ll always love me.” A sob broke through my words. “That’s what I’m most afraid of. That’s what Grace meant.”
Bethie wrapped me tight in her arms, so tight I couldn’t breathe, and I still tried to hold her tighter. Then I sobbed, venting all the ugly that had built up inside. She held me as I cried. Deep, cleansing sobs wrenched out from a painful place I didn’t know existed. The pain, so encompassing, shook my very core. I held onto Bethany for fear I’d drown. All the fear of being Mama. All the terror of never knowing love. All the years of fearing that I’d end up alone, unloved.
Just the way Mama had entered the world. The way she’d lived most of her life. And the way she’d left it. She’d died alone in her car after revealing her plan to leave her second husband for another man. That wasn’t real love.
Bethany’s strength didn’t falter. She held me through it all. At the end of my emotional venting, I pulled away. Her thumbs wiped the tears off my cheeks.
“Wow, Lizbeth,” she said softly. “You needed that.”
A pause swelled between us. I felt thickheaded, like too much emotion had come out of me at once and left an empty shell behind.
Tears shone in her eyes. “You will never be alone,” she whispered huskily. “You will never, ever be unloved. Not ever. So tell that frightened little girl inside you that she is safe, loved, and at home. There is nothing for her to fear again. You hear me? You. Are. Loved.”
I nodded and whispered, “I love you, too, Bethie.”
“Can we get something straight?” she asked, hands on my cheeks. I braced myself, because she’d switched to her sister-mama voice.
“Yes?”
“In an effort to keep from breaking JJ’s heart, you decided to never give the two of you a chance to see what amazingness you could be. You left just as he was starting to do exactly what you wanted. Just as you started to feel something real.”
Her explanation, stated so clearly, froze me.
“Oh no.”
“Yeah. Do you see it?”
“I did it.” I looked at her in horror. “I did just what Mama would have done. I ran away and broke his heart.”
“When you fear something so much, Lizbeth, you end up creating it. Can you see that you’re already bringing about your own destruction this way?”
The sobering reality hit like a slap.
“Yes,” I whispered.
“Mama did her best, imperfect as she was. Can you see it that way? Can you see her offering for what she meant it as? Desperate love. Wild love. Love she didn’t understand and had never experienced. When Mama gave you romance, she gave you the only gift she had—hope for a better life. She knew her best wasn’t good enough, that you’d need a place to hide. That’s why she gave you storybook love. She wanted better for you. If you hold onto your anger against her”—Bethany pressed her forehead to mine—“it’s going to destroy you.”
“What if I destroy others? What if I do to the people I love exactly what she’s done to us? I could never forgive myself.”
“You won’t.”
Tears obscured my view of her bright eyes when I pulled away. “How do you know that?”
“Because I know you, Lizbeth.” She tucked a piece of hair away from my face with a soulful, loving gaze. “You have advantages Mama never had, goodness Mama never had. You’re stronger than her. You’re willing to go through the dark times and come out the other side. She wasn’t. She didn’t have anyone. You do. Even if Mama did nothing else for us, she gave us each other, didn’t she?”
Bethany ran her hands through my hair with a warm, gentle smile. “Let her go, Lizbeth. Thank her for everything she gave you, then leave her in the past. Don’t let her break you from the grave the same way she broke herself in real life. Can you do
