Kiss Mommy Goodbye by Joy Fielding Read Free Book Online Page B

before!”
    “Did I ask you that?”
    “You didn’t have to. I told you everything about me anyway. I didn’t wait to be asked.”
    “Well, I’m different than you are. Is that so awful? So wrong? That I’m different than you are?”
    “That’s not the point.”
    “What, precisely, is the point?”
    “The point is you should have told me.” She collapsed back into the loveseat. He moved slowly toward her, eventually stopping in front of her, lowering himself to his knees.
    “Would it have made any difference?” he asked. “Would it have changed your feelings for me if I’d told you I’d been married before?”
    “Not then,” she answered.
    “And now?” he asked, his eyes becoming instantly cloudy, catching Donna by surprise. She had not been prepared for his tears. “Does it make a difference now in the way you feel about me?”
    Donna shook her head. “I don’t know.” She paused. “I just feel like someone’s come along and kicked all the air out of me.”
    His hand moved in soothing strokes down her arm. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I was wrong. I was very stupid. I can’t explain it any other way.” He moved up to sit beside her. “I guess I’m not used to making mistakes, and when I do, I don’t like to talk about them.”
    She looked into his eyes, his tears seeming to mimic the path of her own. “But why? Mistakes only make you more human.”
    “Don’t you think I’m human?” he asked. “Oh God, I love you so much.”
    They collapsed sobbing into each other’s arms, Donna’s mind such a jumble of confusing thoughts and instincts, she barely knew where she was anymore, or who she was.
    “Please tell me you love me,” she heard him say.
    She shook her head. “I love you,” she acknowledged tearfully. “I love you.” She extracted herself. “I just don’t know if we should—”
    “Should what?”
    “Maybe we should postpone things for a while,” Donna said.
    “What for? Either you love me or you don’t.”
    “Maybe love just isn’t enough.”
    “What else is there?”
    “Trust,” she said simply.
    Instantly, she felt him withdraw. Where were his arms? She wanted them back around her. Where were the soft, soothing words of apology? She wanted to hear them. The words of reassurance, telling her he loved her, that he would make everything all right again. He opened his mouth to speak; she waited to hear the soft, soothing assurances.
    His voice was cold, distant. “There’s nothing I can do about that,” he told her. “I’ve explained everything as best I can. I’ve apologized. All I can. All I’m going to. You can accept my apology or not. I love you. I want to marry you. But if you feel you can no longer trust me, well, then, there’s nothing I can do. Trust takes time. More than that,it takes a certain amount of blind faith. You either have it or you don’t. I can tell you that I love you, that from now on I’ll answer all your questions as honestly, as openly, as I can. I can promise you I’ll never lay a hand on you in anger, that I’ll never cheat on you. Ever. I can swear it. But I can’t prove it. You have to trust me. You have to be prepared to give one hundred percent all the time.”
    “I thought marriage was a fifty-fifty affair,” she said quietly.
    “Who told you that?” he asked, trying to smile. His voice was gentle again. “Certainly no one with any brains.” He touched her face. “You try meeting someone halfway and see where it gets you. It gets you halfway.” She laughed quietly through her tears. “And if the other person doesn’t come out his half of the way,” he continued, “you have a choice. You can either stay where you are—halfway—which is nowhere, and fail, or you can go the other quarter distance or thirty percent, or maybe even, God forbid, the whole rest of the way over to his corner and put your arms around him and tell him you love him. Even if he’s still insisting he’s right and you’re wrong,