Finding Ashley by Danielle Steel (free ebook reader for iphone txt) 📗

now, and the fact that until recently she no longer had any. In her own eyes, she wasn’t a mother anymore after Robbie died. And now she was about to be again, with the reappearance of Ashley in her life—Michaela. She had to correct herself every time she thought about her.

And as though he sensed what she was thinking, he talked about himself during dinner, more than he had before. It wasn’t relevant before this, but with the kiss the day before, it could be.

“I haven’t been seriously involved with anyone in a long time,” he said quietly. “I’ve been divorced for eight years.” She knew he had just turned fifty. They were almost the same age, since she was forty-nine, about to turn fifty herself. “We were married for nine years, and I think we were both surprised it lasted that long. My wife was an ambitious woman. My family was in politics and so was hers, and I think she thought that she’d get me headed in that direction eventually. My grandfather was the governor of Massachusetts when I was a boy. My father was a senator. I hate politics and everything it stands for. She’s married to a senator from Texas now, which is everything she wanted from me and I didn’t give her. I told her what my plans were before we got married and she didn’t believe me. I wanted a simple country life. We moved here the year after we got married, and I started my construction business. She hated every minute of it, and was in Boston all the time. We tried to have kids for a while, and once we knew that wasn’t going to happen, she lost interest in our marriage. In her mind, she was trapped with a rustic carpenter, and she hated me for it. We hardly saw each other for the last four years we were married. She was away most of the time, in Boston or New York. For the first five years we were trying to have kids, which was hard on her. It’s a depressing process when it doesn’t work, and we tried everything. She blamed me for it, but it turned out to be her. I was okay with it, but she wasn’t. She wanted to adopt, and I wouldn’t. I love children, but don’t need my own to be happy. My brother, Ted, has five boys and I love being an uncle. It’s enough.

“My brother is a lawyer in Boston, and so is his wife. They both went to Yale, undergrad and law school. Everyone in my family did, and graduated, except me. I’m severely dyslexic and struggled as a kid, I’m better with my hands, and at math. My wife hated the fact that I had no political ambitions, building houses didn’t count for her as an occupation. She thought it was blue-collar work and was ashamed of it. I’m proud of every house I built or worked on.” He smiled at Melissa and was proud of hers too, and so was she. She had enjoyed their collaboration for four years. “So that’s me,” he said comfortably. “What about you?” he asked her. “Do you miss writing books?” Now that he knew she was a bestselling published author, which impressed him. The written word always did, since it was hard for him. He was good at other things, like his construction business, which was very successful locally.

“Never.” She answered his question immediately. “You have to sell your soul to be a successful writer. I did that for ten years. And in my case, I needed to be angry to do it. I’m not angry anymore. I don’t need to write and won’t again. My books and our son held our marriage together and made it work, since my husband was my literary agent. He made some great deals for me. That’s all over. I don’t need it, and everything you have to do to stay on top. My life is better now.” She had that in common with him. They could have had bigger lives, and didn’t want them. She’d had all that for a while, and Robbie had been her excuse to give it up. She realized now that in some ways she’d been relieved to stop.

“What were you angry about?”

She thought about it for a minute before she answered. “Everything. Everyone. My parents. My mother, for sending me to Ireland and forcing me to give up the baby. She was a hard, unhappy woman with a sharp tongue. I’ve been more like her than I want to be since my son died. I guess she was angry too, at my father. He was a weak man, from a successful family with money. He lost most of it and couldn’t keep a job. He was an alcoholic, but a quiet one. He let her do whatever she wanted to keep the peace, and took a beating from her every day. She died when I was seventeen, less than a year after I came back from Ireland, which I never forgave her for. And he died a year later, of cirrhosis. I took care of my sister then. She’s six years younger. She was like my own child. She wanted to be an actress, and threw all of it out the window and ran away to become a nun. I never understood it, and I hated nuns because they took my baby away. So after that, I was angry at her too. I was angry at life when my son got sick and died. I’m not angry at my ex-husband. I don’t blame him for leaving me. There was nothing left of me by then, and he was in pain too. He’s married to a quiet, unexciting woman, a writer too, but she’s a nice person and she suits him. I hope he’s happy. We don’t speak. I email him once a year. I haven’t seen him in years, and don’t want