“No,” Seth admitted, and she heard the reluctance in his voice. “There’s got to be an explanation, but all she does is blast out at Jerry. The poor guy can barely get a word in edgewise.”
“She has a right to be angry.” Reba was all too familiar with the anger that followed the shock of such a discovery. She’d carried hers around with her for four long years. It burned as brightly now as it had the day she’d stumbled upon John and Vicki in bed together.
At first, when she’d been numb with shock, John had tried to reason with her, explain it all away with the sweetest of lies. Vicki’s eyes had said it all. They’d been filled with horror and regret, but it was too late. Much too late for apologies or forgiveness.
“Of course she has a right to be angry, but she isn’t even giving Jerry a chance to explain himself. It’s like she wants to believe he’d purposely hurt her.”
“Perhaps he already has.” Reba’s hand tightened around the telephone receiver. Eventually she’d need to tell Seth about her strained relationship with her family. In the years since her broken engagement she hadn’t related the story often, but she felt Seth had a right to know this painful part of her past. She cared about him, wanted with all of her heart for this relationship to work. Wanted it enough to bare her soul. The irony of it was that she could tell him only over the phone. She needed the separation, the protection of distance, in order to relate the details of what had shaped the last few years of her life.
“Do you remember what I said about me avoiding my family?”
He hesitated, as if he instinctively knew the importance of what she was about to tell him. “I remember,” he said.
She drew in a deep breath, anticipating the pain the story was sure to bring. “Four years ago…the same year Pamela died, I was engaged to an architectural student by the name of John Goddard. We’d met in college and fallen deeply in love. We planned our wedding; every detail was of the utmost importance. My older sister, Vicki, was to be my maid of honor. I’ve never spent a more wonderful summer. I’d graduated from college with a business degree, and was in love and about to be married. Then…” The sudden knot that tightened her throat made it impossible to continue.
“Reba?”
The gentle concern in his voice nearly undid her, and she struggled to hold back the emotion. “Vicki was jealous…I knew it, saw it. We’d always been competitive, but for the first time in our lives I had something she wanted. You see, she was always the one who blazed new territory. Grades, sports, and just about everything else. It was important to her to outdo me, to be first. Yet I was the one who was engaged, I was to be the first one married.
“She didn’t love John, but she flirted with him, teased him, and asked him if he was sure he was marrying the right sister. I laughed it off. What else could I do but laugh?”
“What happened?” Seth asked with tender concern.
She braced herself and between gritted teeth said the words. Each one fell from her lips as hard as concrete. As hard and as unbending. “A week before the wedding I found my sister in bed with my fiancé. I’m convinced she planned it that way, that she wanted me to find them. She wanted to show me that she could have anything that was mine. Anything, including my soon-to-be husband.” There couldn’t be any other explanation. But Vicki’s victory had turned out to be a shallow one. Reba recognized that the moment she saw her sister and the sick regret in her eyes. The remorse and honest grief.
“You broke off the engagement?” Seth asked, again with cautious tenderness, recognizing what it had cost her to peel back the wounds of the past.
“I canceled the wedding that very day, and I haven’t spoken to my sister since.” She tensed, waiting for him to tell her how foolish she was being, that by refusing to forgive her sister, she was only hurting herself. Well-meaning friends had said it before, and it was a theme her mother sang at every opportunity. No one understood that what Vicki had done was unforgivable.
“The ironic part of it is that my sister’s married now to another man and has a child. The adored, lone grandchild.” Hiding her bitterness was an impossible task. That her sister should find happiness while she lived alone rankled every time she allowed her mind to dwell on it.
“In other words, your sister came away from all this smelling like a rose.”
Her eyes flew open. Seth knew. Seth understood. “Yes,” she whispered, grateful that he appreciated the irony of her situation.