My eyes flutt
ered wide. I was immediately struggling to understand.
“Hurt herself? What do you mean – ”
“After Dad died, and after Julian moved away... things were bad.” Emmett cleared his throat as he wrung his hands. “And one morning… it was probably 6AM when Gram called me crying so hysterically I started driving right over in my pajamas because I couldn’t get words out of her. I had no idea what she was saying and at some point, she just dropped the phone.”
Dread filled my chest.
“What happened?”
“My mom tried to kill herself.”
My heart slammed against my ribs. “What?”
“Julian doesn’t know,” Emmett said fast, looking up at me warningly. “And he can’t.”
“What – why?”
“Because he’ll blame himself,” he said, a slight panic in his eye. “He already blamed himself for Dad and he still does to this day. He’s gotten way better since meeting Sara, and she’s made a world of difference in the way he handles this part of his life, but I don’t want to risk the bad times coming back. He already won’t forgive himself for being gone for so long – he definitely doesn’t need to know exactly how bad things were when he was away.”
“So he… never even knew your mom did this? You never called him when it happened?”
“She wouldn’t let me. And Gram told me we should just do what we could to keep her calm,” Emmett said. “And I was eighteen when this happened – I didn’t know how to handle something like this. I know I made mistakes but I was learning along the way.”
“Oh my God.” I felt my breath against my fingers as I held my hands to my face in total shock. “You were eighteen,” I realized, the information hitting me fully. “But… wait. I don’t understand how you drove over so fast. You were in college at this point and your mom was – ”
“She still had the Upper East Side townhouse, but pretty much right after Julian left, she moved to be near me. She and Gram rented this little apartment near my campus.”
“In Philly?”
“Yes.”
Wow. I had definitely never known that and I couldn’t imagine it. I’d grown up seeing Audrey Hoult as the whole city’s cool PTA mom. She lived for throwing parties and chairing fundraisers. She was the epitome of Manhattan glamour to me, so it was hard to picture her uprooting her city social life to move to Philly.
Of course, it was even harder to imagine her attempting suicide.
“She didn’t tell anyone, obviously. She felt guilty and ashamed that she needed her son to take care of her. She said that was supposed to be her job, so I shouldn’t have to be cleaning for her and checking on her. But I had to. Gram wasn’t doing the best at the time either, and if I didn’t cook for Mom, she wouldn’t eat,” Emmett said, bringing me back to the morning he’d surprised me with that beautiful breakfast.
Suddenly I had a guess as to exactly when and why he’d taught himself how to cook. My gut wrenched as I imagined eighteen-year-old Emmett trying to plate the meals he made as beautifully as he could, just to entice his mom to eat.
“I know. It’s a lot,” Emmett said, eyeing the look on my face.
I nodded. It was.
Audrey Hoult had always been my picture of poise. My mother’s too. We always went home on Sundays and marveled over her, whether it was her clothes, her cooking or her patience to dote on everyone around her. I could hardly process that at one point she was the one who was completely helpless – the one who needed to be cared for day and night.
And by Emmett no less.
As the cleaning crew started moving the tables out of the ballroom, we watched, quiet for a little. We went even quieter when the ambient music shut off to create a silence so deafening I caught Emmett grimace.
I knew it was hard for him to talk about this. It was always hard to talk about the pain you kept to yourself. It was the kind that was so big, and buried so deep that you could never unearth just a little at a time. Once it was out, it had to all come out. And when it did, it shifted the way your thoughts had for so long sat in your head. In your heart. It made you face all the truths you liked to hide yourself from on a day-to-day basis.
It rearranged your entire being, and I knew that well from the night I spoke to Emmett about Dad.
“It’s hard to hear all this out loud,” he said. “Even from my own voice.”
“I know what you mean.” I took his hand in mine, massaging it gently. “It makes you think about all the things you should’ve done instead. Or ways you could’ve made this easier on yourself at some point.”