Free Promise of Forever by Jessica Wood Page A

Then she saw my expression and immediately rushed over. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
    She sat me down at the dining table and listened to me retell everything that’d happened in the last few days. It wasn’t until I finally finished telling her about the new letters I just read that she finally spoke.
    “Honey, I know your mom’s had a hard life,” she said softly. She let out a heavy sigh before continuing, “And sometimes I do blame it on the way John had treated her.”
    “You knew about them?” I looked at her in surprise.
    She nodded. “Your mom met John when she was visiting here one summer. She was a free-spirit then. She was young and didn’t have a job, so she lived with us for some time. John lived next door. The house used to be his parents’ before they moved down to Florida for warmer weather. They had a short but intense love affair, and from what your mom told me, his family didn’t approve of her. John’s from a conservative family with a lot of old money and there was an expectation to find a wife with the right pedigree.”
    “Pedigree?”
    “Yeah, like an Ivy League education and an established family name.”
    “Oh.”
    “But then your mom got pregnant. At first she told me he was going to tell his parents and marry her, but after she had the miscarriage, things seemed to change. He stopped seeing her and taking her calls. And about six months later, we saw in the papers that he was engaged to the woman who’s a part of the Astor family, a rich and influential family since the 19 th century.”
    “And that’s Jackson’s mom?”
    She nodded.
    “So who is my father then?” I was afraid to ask but I knew there was no turning back at this point.
    Aunt Betty let out a deep sigh. “Your mom was in a bad place after the miscarriage. She started drinking and doing drugs to escape. I think at some point, she found out that Jackson’s mom was pregnant, and she wasn’t able to cope with that news. Days, sometimes weeks, would go by when she would just disappear because she was out drinking, doing drugs and sleeping around. I tried to reason with her and tried to get her help, but she wouldn’t let me. It only made her disappear for longer periods of time. And then one day, she came home sober and told me she was pregnant and needed my help to stay clean because she was determined to keep the baby.”
    She paused and looked at me. Tears blinded my eyes as I knew what she was going to say next.
    “That baby was you, Chloe. When your mom found out she was pregnant with you, she didn’t touch a drop of alcohol or drugs. That’s how much she wanted you.”
    Tears streamed down my face as I thought about what my mother had gone through, what she had felt when the man who she loved abandoned her the way he had.
    “I miss her,” I said as I wiped away my tears.
    “Me too, honey. She loved you very much.”
    There was a long stretch of time where neither one of us spoke. Finally, it was Aunt Betty who broke the silence.
    “I’m glad you know the truth now. We almost lost you a few days ago because you didn’t know it.”
    I nodded.
    “And now you and Jackson can work through this and start that relationship you’ve both been denying yourselves for so many years.”
    “Really? Even with what happened between my mom and his dad?”
    “Oh, honey. That was a long time ago. Learn from your mom’s mistakes and let go of the past. You are not your mom and Jackson is not his dad. Don’t let their mistakes come between what you and Jackson have. You two are perfect together and I know you love each other. Both of you deserve to be happy.”
    “Yeah.” As much as I knew Aunt Betty was right, I couldn’t help but feel guilty for wanting to be happy with Jackson.
    Aunt Betty left me to myself for the rest of the afternoon when I told her I wanted some time to think. I spent the time lying on my bed, trying to figure out what to do.
    I’d held on to the idea of a future with Jackson