What If (Willowbrook Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

was more at stake than just her safety.
    Taking a deep breath at the possibility of damaging yet another cherished secret she held close to her heart, she pulled in front of her house and parked in her driveway. The sight of her mother walking in the cemetery behind the house had her smiling though her chest ached.
    Her mom missed her dad, and Emma . . . she swallowed past the lump in her throat. She missed her mother. At the age of seventy, her mom was slowly losing her mind to Alzheimer’s.
    She got out of her car and shut the door behind her. When Jackie—her mother’s caregiver—saw Emma, she waved. Emma headed over and stopped at her father’s grave. Her mother was on her knees, swiping her fingers side to side across the grave marker.
    “She wanted to visit your dad,” Jackie said with a nod at her mother’s head of gray hair.
    Emma lowered herself onto her knees and enveloped her mother’s frail body in her arms. “I love you, Mom.”
    “Mother, I want to go home,” her mother said, her tone childlike.
    “It’s me, your daughter Emma.”
    “Don’t know Emma.”
    “Come on, Maureen.” She addressed her mother by her first name. “Show me your favorite headstones. Tell me what kind of person you think they were.”
    She let go of her mother and helped her to her feet. Hand in hand, they walked among the headstones. As her mother talked, Emma squeezed her hand and smiled. This was the game they played. Afterward, she’d feel awful for misleading her mother. But she loved her too much to let a disease of the mind keep them from spending time together.
    “How’s Dad?”
    Emma’s steps faltered. Her mother must’ve thought she and Drew were her dead parents.
    “Dad’s fine.”
    Though her mind wasn’t completely there, her mom must’ve sensed something was wrong.
    “Dad loves you.”
    “Yes, Maureen, he does.”
    “Dad makes everything right.”
    No, not this time . Not when he’d said Tess’s name in place of Emma’s.
    Her mother yanked her hand out of Emma’s and glared. Emma reached for her, but Mom recoiled back.
    “You make it right again, Emma Lombardi, or so help me . . .” Wrapping her arms around herself as though giving comfort to a body she couldn’t understand, her mother whimpered.
    “I’ll take her home,” Jackie said. “Come on now, Maureen.” Home was the adult family home at the edge of town.
    Emma’s mother set her hand in Jackie’s. Together they strolled back to Jackie’s car. Emma followed. With a touch of a button on her key fob, Jackie unlocked the doors to her car.
    Emma helped her mom into the passenger seat and buckled her in. “I’ll be by at dinner to see you.”
    Her mother didn’t say anything back, just gave Emma a dismissive wave. Their time together was over. Saddened but determined to break through to the strong woman inside the shell of what her mother had become, Emma leaned in and pressed her lips to her mom’s cheek. Her mother startled beneath her touch.
    Emma was ready to close the door when her mother reached out and cradled her face in her warm palms. “Love you, Emma.”
    The lightest touch, the softest gesture, and the best words. Oh, Mom . “I love you more.” Holding back tears, she gently closed the door and watched them until Jackie’s car disappear around the corner.
    The tightness in her chest refused to go away. Of her friends, Emma’s parents had been the oldest. For years they had tried to have a baby. Imagine their surprise when her mother got pregnant at the age of forty-five. Though her dad wasn’t a spring chicken at ten years her mother’s senior, he took on the responsibility of fatherhood with the energy of a guy in his twenties.
    Her father. She unlocked the door to her place, and rushed to the kitchen. She’d forgotten about the tulips she’d bought to put at his gravesite. He loved tulips. Had said they reminded him of the place where he’d proposed to Emma’s mom, up in Skagit Valley, Washington, in a