Page 19 of Betrothal or Breakaway

CHAPTER

TEN

AMBER

The day after Thanksgiving, I have to run to the store for diapers. I’m running so low on time and diapers, I pop into Dorothy Lane Market. Dorothy Lane isn’t for me, it’s for rich people. A supermarket so pristine and well-coiffed, I feel like I can’t touch anything, or I’ll leave a stain on it with my peasant-hands. It’s one of those stores where you buy two things and it somehow costs a hundred dollars. But it’s almost eight, and I need to get Nella to bed. This happens to be the nearest store that carries diapers, and I don’t feel like wading through the Black Friday shoppers.

As I strut through the store at night with a tired baby, bags under my eyes from exhaustion, and barely enough money in my checking account to purchase the diapers I need, my mind goes back to Ford’s crazy idea, and I wonder if it’s not so crazy after all. What would it be like to live with Ford? For him to run to the store late at night, for us to be a team. It almost sounds…nice.

Nella is in the baby carrier strapped to my front as I navigate the glossy aisles all the way to the back where the baby section is. I’m passing by a large shelf of health food when a woman rounds the corner, and we nearly slam into each other.

My hand protectively cups the back of Nella’s head. “I’m so sorry,” I say, looking at my daughter instead of the person who I almost slammed into.

“Not at all, completely my fault,” the woman argues.

I look up at the woman’s face and an uneasy feeling moves through my body. This woman is familiar, but it takes me a few seconds to pinpoint where I recognize the perfect, blonde shoulder-length bob and hazel eyes. Theo’s mother. I’ve only met her once, since he rarely brought me around his friends or his mother. He always told me it was because his parents were divorced and he didn’t have much of a relationship with either of them—something I could tell was false the moment I stepped inside his mother’s home and heard their conversation. Theo’s mother knew more details about his schedule than he ever told me. And she even seemed familiar with his friends.

“Oh.” Recognition lights up her eyes, the same hazel color as her son’s. She sweeps two perfectly manicured hands down the front of her button-down top and pencil skirt. “Amber, right?”

“Yeah. Yes.” I stumble over my words. “Nice to see you, Mrs. Peregrine.”

She smiles faintly, but I can tell by her posture she feels just as uncomfortable as I do.

Nella fusses from the carrier, a silent plea for me to start walking again.

Nella’s unhappy sounds prompts Mrs. Peregrine to notice the infant for the first time. She cocks her head to the side to study my little girl, her eyes growing wider the longer she looks.

“She’s darling,” Mrs. Peregrine finally says. Her words coming out careful and slow, like her brain is calculating. “Is she yours?”

My eyebrows raise. Why would I have a baby in Dorothy Lane Market at eight at night, on a weekend if she wasn’t mine?

“Um, yes.”

The woman nods, her eyes shifting as if doing algebra in her head. “May I ask how old she is?”

I swallow, my throat suddenly thick. It’s not until this moment, right here next to the almond flour and stevia in Dorothy Lane Market, that I realize Theo never told his mother I was pregnant. He probably didn’t tell his father either. Maybe he simply told them he ended our engagement, and they sighed in relief and went back to their perfect lives.

I meet Mrs. Peregrine’s pretty brown-green eyes. “Three months old.”

Her eyes go all shiny in the supermarket lighting. I bite my bottom lip, unsure what to say and even more unsure how to feel. On one hand, I feel bad for her. She’s meeting a grandchild she didn’t know she had, a baby fathered by her only child. But on the other hand, she never tried to get to know me and wasn’t overly warm or even friendly the one time I was around her. Theo took me to his mother’s home right after he proposed, and I was so excited to finally meet her. But I was met with a historic mansion that was as beautiful as it was tragic. I still remember the forested lot and how eerie it all felt. A home that seemed cold and unwelcoming…a house that was merely wood and plaster, with no color or laughter.

It was that day when everything seemed to change between us. He became busier with work, which didn’t seem that strange since he was doing his residency. And he stopped texting me throughout the day. Again, I thought he was just a busy medical resident. Stupidly in love, I was. Ignoring all the signs.

I don’t think he could bear to soil the Peregrine name—so rich with old money, so cultured—by adding a hair stylist into its midst. He never brought me back to his mother’s home again, and he was also never introduced me to his father. Like I’d failed some unspoken test.

Theo used to joke he was the black sheep of the family because he went into medicine instead of law. As if even being a doctor was even beneath his parents. I’d thought he was joking. But I don’t think he was.

The day I met Theo, he’d come into my salon wearing scrubs and looking exhausted. He was in his last year of medical school, and he charmed me instantly. After that, Theo came in for a haircut every week until finally, he asked me to dinner. I thought I was the luckiest girl in the world.

Mrs. Peregrine shuffles on her heeled feet, drawing me out of the bitter-sweet memories. Her back is as straight as a flagpole as she stares at me and my daughter, her expression unreadable. If I didn’t know better, I might wonder if she was holding back tears. But she doesn’t strike me as a person who has emotions, let alone one shows them to her son’s ex-fiancée.

The woman clears her throat. “Well, I apologize for almost bumping into you. Have a nice evening.”

I nod and watch her walk away from us. Halfway to the checkout, she stops. I think she might turn back and say something else. But her steps begin again, and she never looks back.

CHAPTER

ELEVEN

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