Page 7 of The Paid Wife: A Lesbian Romance
heart to hear you say things like that. None of this has been
easy for him.”
Emily stood and grabbed her backpack. “Right. Thanks,
Mom. Thanks for listening to one thing I said.” She might
have cut her mom and dad some slack on most of the issues
she was dealing with if she actually felt like what they were
saying was genuine.
She’d always felt like a stranger in her own family. Now,
she was cramping her father’s career because she was less than
the ideal daughter that fit nicely into the neat and tidy little
box of public perception. Her dad had never been overly
involved in her life. He was
barely aware that she existed until
she’d sat her parents down when she was sixteen and told
them she was gay, and then bam! Suddenly she was this issue
that had to be solved. A puzzle that neither of them
understood. A threat that needed to be watered down and
eventually mitigated.
Her dad had kind words for her, that was true, but love?
Emily wasn’t sure Peter Radcliffe was capable of loving her.
He didn’t even know who she really was as a person. He’d
gone to none of her school things ever. That was her mother’s
job. He never paid attention to anything she wrote, the things
that mattered to her, or even to her art. It was her mom who
pushed the lawyer thing.
How Sandra picked it for her, Emily had no idea. She did
know that she had no intention of going to law school. She’d
made her mom agree that she could do her degree first, then
apply. It worked in her favor, since she had agreed and her
parents had paid for art school, which wasn’t cheap.
