Bake Off by Denise Grover Swank

Author:Denise Grover Swank [Grover Swank, Denise]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781940562643
Publisher: DGS

Chapter Twenty-Three

Maddie

I covered my hand with his.

He drew in a shaky breath, then offered me a weak smile, looking more than a little lost, so I decided to help him out.

“Tell me about your father.”

His eyes widened in surprise.

“You told me a few weeks back that he thought your life was one mistake after another. That must be hard.”

“It would be if I cared what he thought,” he grunted, his jaw tight.

“You don’t care?”

“I only care because of how it affects my mother and my sister, my mother particularly. She bears the brunt of his ill temper.”

I wasn’t sure I believed that he didn’t care, but then I remembered that when we were discussing Amy’s abuse, he talked about abused women as though he had experience in the matter. “Does your father hurt your mother?” I asked carefully.

He released a bitter laugh. “Not in the way you’re probably thinking. He’s hard to live with, even more so when he’s upset with me. He blames her for a lot of my mistakes. He was barely around when I was a kid, so she pretty much raised me and my sister as a single mom. He thinks she was too lenient and babied me too much.”

“Why wasn’t he around?”

“He was too busy working.” He grimaced. “He’s a retired lieutenant with the Memphis Police Department. Your typical workaholic.”

“Kind of like you?”

His gaze turned pensive. “Yeah. I suppose I’m still trying to prove I’m not a fuck-up. Even though I don’t really care what he thinks, and he’s not paying attention anyway.”

“It’s hard to ignore the voices in our heads,” I said, leaning forward. “I have my own, although the voice in my head isn’t my mother’s. It’s my own.”

I stopped, hesitant to continue. Was I really going to tell him this? He was sharing things about himself. If we had any chance at something between us, didn’t I owe it to him to share my own trauma? Still, it wasn’t lost on me that I’d never shared any of this with Steve and had only hinted at it with Mallory.

“My mom was a doer,” I said with a sad smile. “She volunteered for a lot of projects and organizations. She was president of the Women’s Club, and when she was in charge, it truly was a service organization. She was an amazing schoolteacher, always there for her students, helping them outside of class, and not just with their schoolwork, but their personal lives too.” I paused, swallowing the lump in my throat. “Sometimes it felt like she was there for everyone but me.”

Noah flipped my hand over and interweaved his fingers with mine. I bit my lip and looked up at him, taking in the empathy and encouragement in his eyes.

“When I was a kid, some part of me knew she was an amazing woman. Now that I’m older, I can see how hard it was for her to raise me on her own—how difficult it must have been for her to balance work, motherhood, and her altruism.

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