She grunted her acknowledgment.Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched. She’d taught us that. Mostly, it was to expect to get screwed over by people, and since life had only reinforced that thought, I took the lesson to heart. The sale was pending. I’d had little leverage and it had sold for less than the land and house were worth, but I’d already lost two buyers trying to negotiate.
“You shouldn’t have used Sal as your agent,” Mom grumbled. “The sale would be over by now.”
Sal Longwood was a seedy prick who stared at me like he was picturing me naked, but he’d been the only one to call me back during my real estate agent hunt. No one in a hundred-mile radius wanted to work with a Townsend. I just shrugged.
“How much did you get for it?” she asked.
“Like I said, the sale isn’t done.” I wouldn’t tell her anyway. She’d berate me. She knew damn well how much land was worth this close to Bozeman. She didn’t know that even millionaires looking to escape their metropolises wouldn’t pay premium for a house that needed to be condemned, not when it was surrounded by pastures still recovering from overgrazing.
She smacked her lips. “I don’t expect you to be able to negotiate the deal. Sal’s only going to screw you over.”
I’d tried to haggle, but Sal said it was a buyer’s market. “He did okay.” The guy knew real estate and I didn’t, but I knew how much of my debt that house would pay, and how many years of Mom’s care it would cover, so I stuck with that.
She ran her tongue over her teeth. She was missing a bottom tooth and a couple of molars. “I would think by now you should be able to identify cheating men.”
My defenses were clicking into place, but I couldn’t help but compare how she lacked all faith in me to how Teller offered his expertise. He was bewildered I hadn’t taken him up on it, but he hadn’t insulted my intelligence or alluded to how he thought I couldn’t do it.
“Scott would’ve been able to get a lot of the money for the house,” she continued, “but he wouldn’t have had to sell in the first place.”
I bit the inside of my cheek. I would disagree, the bar wouldn’t have been able to sustain her care, but I knew better than to provoke her.
She turned her gaze out the window. “He should be here.”
Yes, he should.
Just as I was getting choked up, she pinned me with her hard gaze. “He should be here and not you.”
I recoiled. Whoa. That last part was new. I’d been compared to my brother all my life. I hadn’t been as clever as him, as ambitious, or as talented. He’d gotten all our parents’ love and devotion. But in the six months since he’d been gone, Mom had never saidthat.
Why was I surprised? Yet my throat burned as much as the backs of my eyes.
“Good night, Mom.” I spun on a heel and left.
Tears threatened to gather. I could not want someone like Ramona to see me crying. She’d hold it against Mom and there that last warning went.
This wing had a small party room that should be empty by now. The light was off and I ducked in, leaving the space dark. I tucked myself in the corner and inhaled a shuddering breath.
Get it together. I hated to cry in front of people. Weaknesses got exploited and tears only framed them with a neon sign.
I blinked and sniffled, but my vision continued to blur.Don’t cry, don’t cry, don’t cry.
“Madison?”
I jumped and pressed my hand against my mouth. Who was in here?
A shadowy figure walked into the light filtering through the door. Mae Bailey. The corners of her kind eyes were creased with concern and she held a plastic tray with a lid. She set it on the table we used for food when there was a party and came closer.
“Are you okay?” Her warm smile was a balm for my grief. “It’s a silly question, isn’t it? But it’s hard not to ask.”
Her gentle voice soothed some of the hurt, but it didn’t chase away the embarrassment of getting caught hiding and crying. “You mean most people don’t tuck themselves into a dark corner when they’re happy?”
Her chuckle was just as calming as the rest of her. “I was known to do that so I didn’t lose my ever-loving mind when the kids were young and the house was louder than usual.”
Her dark hair, streaked with gray, swirled around her face. She was younger than my mom, but not by much. Where Mae and her late husband had started their family young, my parents had waited. And then, according to Ma, kept going for one kid too many.
“After Darin died,” she said, “I started doing it again. Otherwise the kids worry.”
The differences between our families grew starker. She’d probably never called her kids stupid.
