“It’s not her feelings I’m anxious about, Tina. I know she loves me; and I know she respects me and looks at me with an honest regard …”

“Don’t tell me it’s your feelings for her, Jade. That’s the last thing I would ever doubt about anyone’s love for anyone else, maybe with the exception of Bette’s feelings.”

“Ummm…”

“Really, honey. I know how deeply you love her, how crazy you are about her.  So c’mon, Jade.  Let’s be serious….”

“I don’t want to be like my parents,” Jade blurted.

“Your parents?”

Okay, I have to admit I know little about Jade’s family environment. All I know is I heard mom talk about her occasionally and the fact that my birth father was Jade’s father’s second cousin.  I thought, or mom had the impression, that Lucy and Alan Wetmore had done well in life and had raised a happy family.  I guess that’s the danger of going by impressions.

“Of course they may have loved each other at one point. Maybe early on.  Then it must have flickered out.  When they had kids, and by the time they had me they must have just gotten all of that out of the way.”

“I wouldn’t have ever guessed that, Jade.”

“Oh, yeah, Tina. It was brutal.  Like there was this awful dinner scene when I was a junior, and my brothers were teasing my about all these plans I had of applying to Ivy League schools because my test scores had been topline and my high school record and extra-curriculars were great, then in the middle of all of that my dad kinda growled at my mom, “We’re supposed to eat this effing garbage??!”

Jade fell quiet. Tina didn’t respond to the shocking story.  After a minute, her cousin continued, “My mom told him off.  And as they went at it, I swore to myself that I wouldn’t trust my feelings for someone to the point where I’d get married when it came time for me to make a decision to settle down.  Or think about having kids with someone. Not unless I was really, really sure that I was in love, and was feeling so much for someone else that living without that person would be unthinkable, or wouldn’t feel like living at all.  That it would feel like dying.  That there was zero chance of this feeling disappearing one day, the way those feelings seemed to have fled from my parent’s marriage.  And of course, the person I would love like that would have to love me, too.  To some extent, I mean … “