“Then why the hell did you marry him?”
She shrugged. “Because he made me laugh. He made me feel special. It was easy to fall in love with him, though sometimes I wonder if I ended up falling in love with someone more like my own father.”
I paused. “What do you mean?”
“Ah, we don’t have to get into all that. Right now, we need to focus on—”
“Cecilia.”
My curt tone shocked her into silence, and I heard why. I sounded like my father. My voice filled the room like my father. I closed my eyes, trying to swallow down the taste of my father’s voice within my own.
“I’m sorry.”
She took my hand. “It’s okay.”
I shook my head, ignoring the dull pain I still felt. “It’s not.”
“You just wanted me to—”
“I sounded just like him, and that's not okay. Because my father isn’t an okay kind of man. You and I both know this.”
Damn it, I wished I could fucking look at the woman. To read her face. To look in her eyes. To let her know she wasn’t alone in all this.
I licked my lips. “What do you mean, he’s like your father?”
Cecilia paused. “I’m not sure if I should really be talking about something like that with you.”
“Why? Because Dad told you not to? Or because you don’t want to?”
And when she fell silent, I knew the reason why.
“Don’t let Dad be that control freak with you, okay? He gets it enough with me,” I said.
She squeezed my hand. “Your father can be a bit off the wall, can’t he?”
I snickered. “That’s one way to describe it.”
“My father was a bit off the wall, too.”
“How so?”
“Oh, you know. Randomly yelling over things. Never quite sticking to the rules he set out. One day, my sisters and I couldn't wear dresses that came above our knees. And the next day, it was full-length dresses only. No boys’ eyes should be on us. And if they were, it was somehow our fault.”
“Yikes.”
She giggled bitterly. “Yeah. It was a very traditional household. The women kept their heads down. Dressed modestly. Head to toe, if Dad preferred it that way. No makeup. No jewelry. No hair products. My father didn’t believe in those kinds of things. Material possessions and all that.”
“Were you raised Amish or something?”
Then the giggle was real. “We might as well have been. Though that still might be an insult to the Amish people as a whole.”
And that comment made me chuckle.
I squeezed her hand as the awkward conversation slowly started to flow. And in the back of my mind, I wondered why I hadn’t taken the time to talk with Cecilia sooner than this. I mean, she and my father had been married for a few years. And in those years, there were things about her I’d never known. Like her laugh. Her bright smile. The way her touch felt against my own. I didn’t know these things about her and she was my fucking stepmother.
Cecilia’s sniffing ripped me from my mind.
“What’s wrong?”