“Tell me,” Rose-Marie encouraged. “How do you see this working out? With the three of you.”
Jewel cut strips of chicken. Though she didn’t take a bite.
She glanced up at Rose-Marie and admitted, “I don’t have an answer for you. This all came about unexpectedly. It’s been challenging, emotionally. But Rogen and Vin understand how I feel about them.”
“How do you feel, Jewel? Are you in love with them? Both of them?”
“Yes.” That didn’t require a moment of consideration. She knew it to the depths of her soul. Jewel said, “I know Rogen and I falling in love when we were kids might seem inconsequential and immature. But the feelings only grew. Intensified over the years. And, for me, never fully went away.”
“And what about Vin?” Rose-Marie quietly asked. Not accusatorily. More … curiously. “We didn’t realize the two of you were an item until right around his high school graduation. Why was it a secret? Were you trying to keep it from Rogen?”
“Rogen and I had broken up by then. But, yes, that is one of the reasons we never went public, until a couple weeks before prom—and even that was very discreet. Mostly just Bay and Scarlet knew. I went to Trinity to explain it all to Rogen. Behind my parents’ backs, and yours and Mr. Angelini’s. Yet I never actually told Rogen, because I realized when I saw him that I still had feelings for him.”
“And Vin.”
“Yes. Another reason I didn’t want anyone to know”—she gave Rose-Marie an earnest look—“was because I was afraid your husband might ship him off, too. Before he turned eighteen.”
“Hmm.” She pushed her salad around on the plate as well. But never raised the fork to her mouth. Her gaze returned to Jewel and she said, “That was never a consideration. Though our hearts broke for him following his parents’ deaths, it was a blessing that Vin came to live with us. Having him there helped to heal our home. Our lives.”
Jewel sensed there was much more meaning behind those words. She very respectfully, tentatively, asked, “Having Rogen there wouldn’t have done the same?”
Rose-Marie’s shoulders squared. Defensively. Her voice turned a bit darker as she said, “I regret that we insisted he go to Trinity. Every day after he left, I regretted it. I cried. I missed him terribly. But I was in no condition to be a mother to him after—”
Taylor.
She didn’t have to say her daughter’s name. Jewel instantly felt the woman’s pain. It sliced right through her. Stealing her breath.
Rose-Marie glanced away. Sniffled. Worked to compose herself as she stared out the window.
Jewel reached across the table and covered Rose-Marie’s hand with hers. “I’m sorry.”
Rogen’s mother nodded, her gaze still on the bay. “I know Trinity was a better environment for my son. Overnight, the mansion became like a mausoleum. Bleak. Cryptic. Somber.”
“Fragile,” Jewel added. “I felt it, too.”
Rose-Marie’s attention shifted to Jewel. Both their eyes were misty.
The other woman said, “Rogen needed to find some inner peace. Unfortunately, Gian sending him to school all the way across the country caused him to lose more of it. Because we sent him away from you.”
Now were they getting to it? The real reason behind the exile?
Jewel brazenly asked, “Is it true that you and your husband wanted to separate us so that we’d fall out of love? Meet someone else. Never marry each other.”
Vin had made that comment on their trip. It had stuck with Jewel.
Rose-Marie stared at her for several suspended seconds. Myriad emotions swirled in her pale-gold irises.
Jewel had no idea how long it took for Rogen’s mother to respond. She waited with mounting anxiety, her heart constricting.
Eventually, Rose-Marie said, “Yes.”
Jewel’s gaze dropped. Her hand covering Rose-Marie’s slipped away.
She swallowed down a hard lump of pain and asked, “Is it because you didn’t think I was good enough for him? Not smart enough for him?”
“It had nothing to do with you personally, Jewel.”
Now anger flashed through her. “It was all because of my last name?”