All Your Life

All Your Life LILY FOSTER Also by Lily Foster THE LET ME SERIES Let Me Be the One Let Me Love You Let Me Go Let Me Heal Your Heart Let Me Fall When I Let You Go THE BLACKBIRD SERIES When the Night is Over Your Hand in Mine Ghost on the Shore All Your Life Contents Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Chapter Twenty Chapter Twenty-One Chapter Twenty-Two Chapter Twenty-Three Chapter Twenty-Four Chapter Twenty-Five Chapter Twenty-Six Chapter Twenty-Seven Chapter Twenty-Eight Chapter Twenty-Nine Chapter Thirty Chapter Thirty-One Chapter Thirty-Two Chapter Thirty-Three Chapter Thirty-Four Chapter Thirty-Five Chapter Thirty-Six Chapter Thirty-Seven Chapter Thirty-Eight Chapter Thirty-Nine Epilogue A Note from Lily Also by Lily Foster Have you read this yet? Prologue AUDREY HAMILTON When did everything change? She used to snuggle in so close it was hard to tell where I ended and she began. And the way she used to look at me? I was this wonderful creature, the center of her universe. She’d sit perched on my bed, watching me put on makeup and jewelry, taking it all in as if she wanted nothing more than to be me someday. “You’re so pretty, Mommy.” “I love you, Mommy.” She still says that last one, but Mommy has been shortened to Mom, and her delivery is routine, just a task to cross off her list. Brushes her teeth, pokes her head in the doorway, tells each of us goodnight and that she loves us. When did I become ridiculous in her eyes? Everything I do is embarrassing, everything I say is wrong. It’s like navigating a minefield, and the eye rolls coupled with her disappointed sighs have blown me to bits more times than I’d care to admit. He tells me it’s just the teenage years, it will pass, I’m being too sensitive—I’ve heard it all. He doesn’t understand, and how could he? She still smiles when she tells her father she loves him, still asks him to come to the stables with her, still abandons what she’s doing and hops off the couch if he asks her to ride into town with him to run errands. A new wardrobe, a spa day, ditching school for a Wednesday matinee on Broadway—she won’t bite. No, when I suggest any kind of outing she has too much schoolwork, and how can I argue with that? I’d love to chalk it up to adolescent angst, but I can’t. She sees through me, examines me and finds me lacking. It’s the same way I looked at my own mother years ago. My life would be more, I’d do better, climb higher. I looked at my mother and saw a life with no meaning. She didn’t earn, didn’t create, didn’t dream. I would be different. Yet here I am, a few months shy of fifty, and what have I accomplished? I live in a beautiful home, in a neighborhood with high manicured hedges and long driveways, with staff arriving on alternate days to handle the gardening, upkeep and cleaning. I traded in my dreams, my aspirations and my career for the comfortable life I now live. I tell myself that I love my life, but that sparkle I used to see when I caught my reflection in the mirror isn’t there anymore. I have everything I thought I ever wanted: the handsome, successful man, the beautiful child, the perfect family. But it’s not enough. Now when I look in the mirror and force myself to take a long, hard look, I feel hollow. I feel unnecessary. My marriage is somewhat of an achievement, especially if I’m comparing us to the other couples we know. We share a deep, abiding love, there is mutual respect and the sex is still decent, so I see us as better than most in that regard. I used to view parenthood in that same way: a status I’d achieved and something I was good at. Especially since our road to becoming parents was a years-long, uphill battle that we ultimately won. But when that child begins to look at you with an expression that manages to be both dismissive and pitying, it’s impossible to feel successful. Does she know? It’s become that thing we don’t talk about. I’m convinced every family has one. In my family it was infidelity, in my husband’s family it was the decades-long rift between his mother and his aunt that they took to their graves. We always planned to tell her. When she was six, seven...We reasoned that it would only confuse her. When she was nine, ten, eleven...We were so blissfully happy it was something I wouldn’t even consider. When she was twelve, thirteen...I told my husband it would only hurt her. And more recently, when she was changing right before my very eyes, I told myself to hold on tight, with everything I had. She was ours, our daughter. Not hers. I used to dig that envelope out every once in a while, study the picture the social worker handed over as my husband waited for me by the elevators with our precious newborn strapped into her top-of-the-line car seat. She was only a few years older than Sarah is now. The realization makes me shudder. Back on that hot August morning I felt victorious, absconding with our treasure. I saw that girl in the drab hospital gown as a threat, as someone who could change her mind and crush me. After everything we’d endured on the road to becoming parents, I didn’t think I could survive another loss. I never truly knew the meaning of the word relieved until the waiting period had expired and I was certain she had no recourse, no way of taking her away from us. It’s in my nightstand now. Sarah asking me out of