“Not everyone has to have a three-act play just to go down the road for milk, Newman. Not every person is demonstrative like you and your posse.” She grabbed the straps of her pack, and this time gave them a really hard yank. “Now give me my bag and go away.”
For once her mother seemed happy to watch proceedings, standing upright on the doorstep. Leaning was not permitted for Millicent Lawrence.
He relented, but only because she was still tugging and he couldn’t stop her.
“That’s what normal people do.”
“Ah, I see what the problem is, Paul,” her mother surprised them both by saying. “We have never been normal, and it’s not our wish to be.”
Newman’s mouth fell open. Hope bit her lip to stop from smiling. Millicent Lawrence was a hard, tough woman, and while there were times in their childhood that they’d wished for another parent, she was always fair. Scrupulously so. But what people didn’t know was that sometimes, when she let down her guard, she could also be funny.
“Was that a joke?” he said, looking confused.
“It’ll do you good to work that one out for yourself, Paul. Too many people fall all over themselves to please you. Now take yourself off my property, young man. I wish to speak with my daughter.”
“Not a joke then, is my guess,” he muttered. Giving Hope a hard look that she tried to decipher, but couldn’t, he left, loping up the drive in that easy way of his.
“Always liked that boy.”
“What?” Hope spun back to face her mother.
“He’s sharp, kind, but has a bit of mean also. An excellent combination.”
Hope eyed her mother suspiciously, but she was already turning and entering the house.
“You got new carpet,” Hope said, following. It was beige, and softened the house. Entering the lounge, she looked out the windows at her mother’s gardens, lush and colorful. Gardening was something Millicent Lawrence was obsessed with. The other thing was the Lake Howling book club.
“Are you hungry?”
“A bit,” Hope said, passing through the lounge and into one of the rooms off it. Her room. Not big, it had been her haven as a child. She and Ryan had been allowed to do what the hell they wanted with their rooms, as long as they stayed clean. She’d gone for pale blue, with pictures of birds. Hope had always loved birds. Her bed was a single, covered in a neat white throw. Her books were still stacked on the shelves, and the rest of her things as she’d left them.
“You can use this room as you want, Mom. It doesn’t need to stay like this.”
“I know. I have no other use for it yet.”
She lowered her pack to the bed and sank onto it as she let the memories come and go. Firsts, frustrations, and loves. She’d had them all in this room.
“Why are you no longer working with Wildlife, Hope?”
Hope dragged her eyes from the trophy she’d got for photographs of the redwoods she’d taken for a school project.
“It was time to move on.” She wasn’t quite ready to come clean to her mother. The weight of disapproval over being fired from Wildlife would be heavy, especially as she would not be telling her the reasons.
“If that was the truth I would understand, but it is not.”
Her mother had always known when she was lying. Hope had just thought that with age and distance she may have gotten better and more convincing at it.
“I have no wish to discuss it now. What’s done is done. I need to move forward.” Hope looked down at her bare knees. Thinking about Wildlife still made her feel ill.
“I will make tea then.” She felt a brief touch on her head, and then her mother was gone. “And when the time comes I will be here to listen. I’m pleased you’re home, daughter.”
People thought Millicent Lawrence was a hard, prickly woman. And for the most she was, but she had been the best mother she could be to her two children, although the general populace of Howling believed otherwise.
“Tea would be welcome, thank you.”
Hope spent the first four days of her return to Howling at home. On day two, she built up the courage to open her computer and search for the pictures that Jay “limp dick” Herald, as she was now calling him thanks to Newman, had stolen from her. This was the first time she’d allowed herself to look at the catalogue of photos she’d taken of the whooping crane. Those shots had been two years of work on her part. She’d given much of herself for those pictures, ignoring exhaustion and cold and hot conditions. Looking at them now, she realized they were some of her best work. Seeing his name attached to them made her go cold.
Rage took her breath as she thought about what he’d done. It wasn’t the credit or the accolades, it was the fact that he’d deliberately set about to manipulate her into trusting him so he could inevitably steal from her. She’d been slow to trust him too, but he’d persisted and eventually she’d relented, believing he cared for her. It had all been a lie. The intimate dinners he’d cooked for her. The hugs and kisses, and yes, the lovemaking. His plan to ruin her life had been an elaborate one, and she’d been a naïve fool.
