He helped behind the bar with the coffee rush. The espresso, the emails he’d answered, the food prep, Mrs. Samuelson, even Star’s infatuation. The morning went exactly as expected.
His world had narrowed to include only two things. Sugar Maple Kitchen and his farm.
It was considerably less traumatic to wake to her alarm clock than to a stranger who riffled through women’s purses.
Regardless, anxiety jumped on Genevieve like a sharp-clawed cat the morning after her homecoming. She’d taken the last Oxyshe’d ever take last night. Today she’d start to get clean. Which was absolutely the right thing to do.
Anxiety over what was to come wouldn’t help a thing. Anxiety was a wasted emotion!
Yet, stubbornly, dismay pooled in her stomach.
She sat up, hair falling heavily over her shoulders. Her attention fixed on the charming painting opposite her equally charming bed in the room her mom had decorated and redecorated for her over the years.
After the soul-purging with Mom yesterday morning, she’d spent the rest of the day trying to make penance by cleaning the already spotless house, running to the grocery store to secretly stock up on the fluids and foods that would help her survive detox, bringing her mom flowers, and making dinner for the three of them.
The prospect of staying here during withdrawal was appealing because this house was the lap of luxury and because her mom would make an extremely attentive nurse. The downside: Mom would be so attentive that she’d insist on taking Genevieve to the doctor or ER when Genevieve claimed flu, at which time a doctor would tell her mother that her beloved younger daughter was suffering from opioid withdrawal.
Her only other option was to race back to Nashville and fight through withdrawal in her apartment—just like she’d done the last time when her attempt at detox had crashed and burned.
She made her way to the adjoining bathroom (charming), piled her hair on top of her head, and stepped into the shower once it grew agreeably steamy. She scrubbed juniper body wash against her limbs. Perhaps she’d find God in the physical misery that was coming for her—
A knock sounded on the bathroom door.
Genevieve stuck her head around the shower curtain’s edge. “Yes?”
“I brought you breakfast in bed, sweetie,” Mom called.
“I’ll be right out.” She turned off the water and toweled dry.
Before the earthquake, her relationship with Mom had been simpler. Nowadays? Complex.
Their interactions tended to follow a well-worn path. Mom smothered her, which frustrated Genevieve, which led to guilt, which eventually concluded in irritability, despite the fact that Genevieve knew she didn’t have the right to feel irritated.
She and Natasha had been blessed with a mom who loved them and fed them and cared for them and picked them up from school and bought them new clothes and said prayers with them and cheered for them at every event and served on the PTA and sent them to private Christian school.
Genevieve cinched the belt of her pink robe around her waist and exited the humid bathroom for the cooler air-conditioned bedroom.
“I was hoping to catch you before you got up.” Mom held a breakfast tray.
“No worries. I can slip back under the covers just as quickly. See? Ready.”
Caroline settled the tray over Genevieve’s legs as if Genevieve were the recent victim of a spinal cord injury. “I made your favorite. French toast with cinnamon-spiced apples and pecans.”
“Amazing.”
“Butter. Maple syrup.”
“Really amazing!” She’d have to eat the majority of this or she’d hurt her mom’s feelings. “Thanks so much.” A plate inscribed withYou Are Special Todayheld the French toast. A cloth napkin cushioned sterling silverware.
Caroline held out a hand. Genevieve proffered her own so her mom could give it a heartfelt squeeze.
“Isn’t this a moment to treasure?” Mom asked.
“Yep!” Squeeze. Meaningful eye contact. Squeeze. Tendersmile. Squeeze. Honestly, Genevieve didn’t need any more mother-daughter moments to treasure. What she dearly wanted were plain old ordinary moments. The pressure to make every moment extraordinary was sapping her life force.
“Here you are.” Mom shook out Genevieve’s cloth napkin, then stretched toward her as if to tuck it into her robe.
“Got it.” Genevieve intercepted the napkin and laid it across her lap. She was thirty years old. She didn’t require her mom to tuck napkins beneath her chin. And just like that, with absolute clarity, she saw that she could not stay here while detoxing. What had she been thinking? Of course she couldn’t. Mom made her want to swallow pills like Kool-Aid.
