“Screaming at another person in public is never appropriate, I don’t care what the little urchin did to deserve it.”
“I understand that.” Astrid reached for a croissant, Isabel’s eyes following her hand’s journey. Astrid dropped the bread on her plate.
“I’ve known Pru Everwood for a long time,” Isabel went on. “Her grandchildren—twins, I believe they are—were notoriously unkempt when they were here during the summers, running around barefoot with tangled hair and dirt under their fingernails.”
Oh no, not tangled hair and dirt.
Astrid took another demure sip of her drink. She didn’t remember Jordan and Simon at all from her childhood, but that wasn’t a surprise. The way Isabel spoke of them now, with a curl to her lipand disdain lacing her voice, there was little chance of her mother letting her play with anyone who might neglect to slip on a pair of shoes before leaving the house.
“Be that as it may,” Isabel went on, taking a squirrel-like bite of a strawberry, “your behavior reflects on your business and it reflects on me. I don’t have to tell you that this project is important. This could make or break you. I expect better and so should you.”
Wait for it...
“Particularly after last year’s unpleasantness. You can’t afford to lose the Everwood job, and we both know it.”
Isabel leaned across the table and patted Astrid’s hand. On her way back, she slid the croissant from Astrid’s plate back onto the serving dish.
“Lindy built that company with her own two hands,” her mother went on, and Astrid fought an eye roll. Lindy Westbrook was one of her mother’s dearest friends, if Isabel was truly capable of friendship, which Astrid doubted.
Regardless, when Lindy, at the age of fifty-one, decided to leave the business to pursue other real estate ventures with her fourth husband up and down the western seaboard, Astrid had just returned from college with a shiny new degree in business administration. Before Astrid even knew what was happening, she’d agreed to step in to run Bright Designs. She was a twenty-two-year-old millennial, so at the time, she’d felt nothing but gratitude that she had a job, and an interesting one at that. She liked interior design. Seemed to be decent at it, if her first few weeks working alongside Lindy were any proof, and had a good head for details and organization.
She also knew how to smile prettily and please a client, which, as Lindy told her more than once, was half the battle.
So she’d smiled. She’d pleased. She’d kept the business afloat, and whenever Lindy glided back into town with her chic silver hair andpower suits, the older woman seemed happy with Astrid’s work, with her clientele and design plans, most of them extremelymodernandelegant.
Officially, Lindy no longer owned any part of the business, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t a legacy. Her approval, Isabel said, was important, even though Astrid owned forty-nine percent of Bright Designs.
Isabel, of course, owned the other fifty-one percent. While Astrid could’ve afforded to buy the company outright at twenty-two with a bit of finagled paperwork—she had money in a trust, left to her by her dead father, but which Isabel had made sure wasn’t fully hers until she turned thirty-five—her mother claimed she wanted to help.
“I can provide some cushion while you get your feet wet” is what Isabel had said at the time. “No need to dip into your nest egg unless you really need to.”
Of course, Astrid soon learned it was just another way for Isabel to maintain control over her life. But Astrid was fresh out of college. She was new at running a business. And Isabel was her mother, her only parent for most of her life. She wanted to please her. She wanted Isabel to smile at her, put her arm around her shoulders and squeeze.
She still did, if she was being honest.
“The Everwood Inn is a national treasure,” Isabel said now. “And it’s in trouble, so if you were the one to help—”
“What do you mean ‘it’s in trouble’?”
Isabel lifted a single brow—a skill Astrid did not inherit—and pursed her lips. Her mother didn’t like being interrupted, and Astrid suddenly felt like she was eight years old undergoing etiquette lessons.
“Sorry,” Astrid said. “I didn’t know the Everwood was having problems.”
Isabel nodded. “Business is bad, from what I’ve heard. Pru closed it down a month ago.”
Astrid blinked. “I had no idea.”
“You can see why success is so integral here. Bright Falls doesn’twant to lose the Everwood to some hotel chain or a family who won’t honor its history. It’s part of the town’s legacy. Bright Designs needs to be the one to help save it. Don’t throw away this opportunity for the life you were meant to lead over a brief moment of temper.”
Astrid just nodded and drained her mimosa, the bubbles burning her throat on the way down.The life you were meant to leadwas one of her mother’s favorite catchphrases. The words had always filled Astrid with a sense of purpose, of destiny, but lately, they just made her sort through every major point in her life and wonder,When the hell did I choose that?
“So tell me,” Isabel said, finally slipping off her sunglasses and smiling at her daughter expectantly, as though she hadn’t just served up all of Astrid’s past failures and current expectations on a platter and invited her to dig in. “Did you see the article I sent you about Spencer? Quite interesting, if you ask me. Amelia Ryland is lovely, isn’t she? You do know what sort of Ryland she is, don’t you? As in Ryland drug stores? So much money in that family, it’s frightening. I believe Amelia herself is...”
Astrid tuned out the rest of her mother’s words about Amelia’s charms, grabbed the croissant before Isabel could blink, and took a huge, incredibly unladylike bite.
Chapter Six
JORDAN KNEW THATpreparing a house for demolition was nearly as labor-intensive as the demolition itself, except this particular work was filled with wandering through countless memories, deciding what to keep and what to give away, all with an eighty-year-old woman who decidedly did not want to give away anything.
