Riley lives in LA. She started her own business—party planner to the stars. She’s not married, but she’s been living with the same guy for the last ten years. Considering I moved my ass in with her aunt before we were married, Chelsea and I had a whole lot of nothing to say about that. The guy’s . . . okay. I don’t hate him—wouldn’t say I like him, either. He makes Riley happy, so, at least for now, I won’t have to kill him.
I’d like to tell you that Raymond’s first crush dream came true—that he and Presley Sunshine Shaw dated, fell in love, and lived happily ever after. But they didn’t.
Turned out, four years—in teen years—was just too big of a hurdle to climb.
Presley became an attorney, like her father—and she married a lawyer, also like her dad. They live just over the Virginia state line, on a horse farm that reminds Stanton of his parents’ place in Mississippi.
Raymond ended up majoring in computer science—no surprise there. His last year of college, he did an internship with a bunch of other brainiacs in Silicon Valley. One of his fellow internshippers was a pretty little thing with dark hair and big brown eyes, who thinks Raymond hung the moon. She said he was the first man she ever met who was smarter than she was. I’m still getting used to the idea of someone referring to Raymond as a man—not sure when that happened. They’ve been married about two years now, and the only thing that gets them more charged up than a new iPhone is each other.
Rosaleen followed in the footsteps of her mother, Rachel. She married her college sweetheart and started having kids not long after. She’s got three little girls and counting. They’re bouncy, blond, and beautiful and remind me so much of her, it hurts. Her husband’s a well-paid campaign consultant and they live only a couple miles away in a house bigger than ours.
Regan is a speech therapist in Alexandria. She just finished her graduate degree and shares an apartment with her best friend from high school. She’s young and gorgeous and having a good time dating every guy she meets. She swears she’ll never settle down because she’ll never find a guy who can measure up to me.
Can’t really argue with that logic.
Little Ronan isn’t so little anymore. He’s twenty-two and just finished the pre-med program at Georgetown. Next up is medical school—and he wants to specialize in obstetrics. Sometimes Chelsea and I wonder how big of an impact Robert’s bathroom home birth had on Ronan. Neither of us asks because we don’t really want to know the answer.
Whoever said “you can’t go home again” never had a family. Because even though they’re grown, with lives of their own, and are spread out all over the country—our kids come home all the time. At Christmas and Easter the house is fucking bursting.
I grumble that it’s a pain in the ass. I complain about the craziness and noise and the chaos. Chelsea just laughs at me.
She says, I love it—that I wouldn’t change a single thing.
And . . . she’s right.
BONUS MATERIAL
Keep reading for a special treat!
What follows is a chapter that ended up getting deleted from the final version of Appealed, but I’m excited to share it with you now! No spoilers if you haven’t read Appealed yet.
Enjoy!
~Emma
Brent & Kennedy – 11 years old
They sat beside each other on the rocks along the water, after sharing the lunch she had stuffed in her backpack—spitting black watermelon seeds into the water.
“So you don’t remember anything?”
Woothoo
Kennedy’s seed flew from her mouth and landed close to shore. As far as spitting distance went—hers was pathetic.
“Nope. Not the day of the accident or the three days before it. It’s just gone.”
It had been two years since Brent’s accident. They hadn’t seen each other the first year—after his long hospital stay there’d been too many doctor appointments and physical therapy sessions. This was the first time they’d talked about “the tragedy,” as Kennedy’s parents called it.
“That must feel strange.”
Woothoo
“Yeah. But my doctors said it’s normal—head injury, the shock from bleeding so much.”
“What happened to the guy who hit you?”
Brent shrugged. And spit. Woothoo. “My parents wanted him to go to jail. Our lawyers argued with the police because they didn’t give him a ticket. But they said he wasn’t speeding, wasn’t drunk. He didn’t see me coming around the bend and I didn’t see him.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“I am now. I talked about it with my therapist. Sometimes stuff just happens. And it’s no one’s fault.”
“Your therapist? Like a psychiatrist?”
“Yeah.”
Woothoo
“What’s that like?”
“Weird.” Brent thought for a moment, then added. “But in a good way. My mother insisted on it, said I had to work through the trauma. But I think she’s more traumatized than I am. She says I’m not allowed to ride a bike again—ever. She had them removed from all the houses and gave them to charity. Even the stationery ones.”
“Like Sleeping Beauty.”
“What?” Brent asked.