Finally, an hour after she’d taken the call, Lucy emerged from the utility room, her face pale, the cordless phone clutched to her chest. Juliet nodded towards it.
“It must almost be out of charge.”
“Sorry.” Lucy put the phone back on the charger.
“Well?” she finally asked when Lucy remained standing in the kitchen doorway. “What did she want?”
“Juliet . . .” Lucy gazed at her, her eyes full of anguish, and Juliet stared back stonily.
“Tell me, then.”
“She has cancer.”
Juliet blinked. “And?” she said after a brief pause.
“And?”Lucy shook her head slowly, and Juliet suppressed a stab of irritation. Clearly she was disappointing her sister with her lack of response. “And she’s having surgery the day after tomorrow. It’s breast cancer, and she’s having a double mastectomy.”
“Fine.”
“Juliet . . .”
“What do you expect, Lucy? For me to fall to pieces? I don’t have a relationship with her. You know that.”
“She’s still our mother.”
“No,” Juliet said coolly. “She’s your mother. She forfeited the right for me to call her that. I never did, actually. She wouldn’t let me.”
Lucy flinched. “Even so . . .”
“No.” The single word came out like the crack of a gunshot, and Juliet half rose from her chair, filled with a sudden, surging fury before she took a deep breath, held on to her composure, and sat back down again. “No,” she said more calmly. “There is no ‘even so’ in this situation.” Lucy didn’t answer and she took a few steadying breaths before making herself ask, “So why did she call? Just to tell you?” Because Fiona obviously hadn’t cared whether she knew.
“No, not just that. She wants me to come home. To be there with her, during the surgery.”
Come home.Because Tarn House, and Hartley-by-the-Sea, weren’t really home, no matter what Lucy had said. “And you’re going?” Juliet asked. “Just like that?”
“I have to—”
“No, you don’t. What about your job here? What about Alex?”
Lucy bit her lip. “He’ll understand. And Maggie Bains is back. She can fill in for the rest of the term. It’s only a few more weeks. I’ll be back in January.”
“So you just drop everything the second Fiona crooks her finger?”
“She hascancer.”
“And when you’ve been in trouble, has she come running to you?” Juliet demanded.
“That . . . that shouldn’t matter.”
“No? Why not?”
Lucy lifted her chin. “Because she needs me. For once.”
“Other people need you,” Juliet pointed out. “What about Bella and Poppy? They danced out of here and now you’re going to disappear?”
“I’ll explain to Alex tomorrow. And it’s only for a few weeks. They’ll understand, Juliet. I know they will.” Her eyes flashed with temper. “You’re the one who has a problem with it.”
Yes, she did. Because it felt, reasonably or not, as if Lucy was choosing Fiona over her. “I thought,” she said coldly, “that you’d changed.”
