“That’s not the issue,” my mother tried.
“And here’s another thing, Mom.” She hadn’t gotten up to walk away and end the discussion, which she would have done in the old days. I could blame her hip for that. Or not. Hopeful, pushing it, I said, “Devon is small, it’s do-able. It’s refreshing.” I was thinking of the days when I had first come, way before the media had, but the media had pretty much exhausted itself, hadn’t it? That was the art of the dream. “And it’s different. You need a change. Devon is a change.” I straightened and smiled. “It worked for me.”
“And for me,” Edward said.
She was torn. I could see it in her eyes, which went back and forth between him and me. I was startled to see shame. “You owe me nothing.”
“Not owe,” I insisted. “Want.Iwantyou to come, Mom. It would be fabulous. For both of us.”
“I don’t know—”
“We could talk.”
“Oh, Mackenzie—”
“Dad would want you to do this. He would want me to do it.”
She seemed heartened by that, but only briefly. “Would he? I just don’t know any more. Too much of what I want is different from what he wants.”
“What doyouwant?”
My mom had always been a woman in control, but she had zero of it now. I’d never seen her bewildered. In a broken voice, she said, “I want to think. A little space, please?”
21
After tucking the afghan around her, I sat by my mother’s hip. She wanted space, but I couldn’t walk out. We didn’t talk. I didn’t even hold her hand, just wanted her to know I was there.
And honestly? The fact that she allowed it was a gift. Did I still want more? Absolutely. But I would have been naïve to think that our relationship would pick up where it had been before the accident. Too much had happened; we were different people now from the ones we had been then. Actually, if I were to dream, I would return to what our relationship had been when I was growing up. It wasn’t all showy with hugs and kisses, more a meeting of minds. She was independent; I was independent. She was disciplined; I was disciplined. If I walked into the kitchen while she was making dinner, I set the table, not because she asked but because it needed doing. If I was cramming for an exam, she brought me tea, not because I asked but because it would help.
Things changed once I hit college and even more after I marriedEdward. I remember, though, that when the accident happened, she had dropped everything and come.
Then she had gone back home to get my father, and by the time she returned, she was distant. So maybe the real problem was Dad. Maybe Liam was right. Maybe she was simply the enforcer. But my father had been dead for more than four years, during which time she hadn’t reached out on her own.
I wanted to ask whether she still blamed me for his death. But what we had here, now, was too fragile. Besides, she had closed her eyes as soon as she lay down, giving her the space she needed. Her lids moved; I wondered what images flickered there. Gradually, the movements slowed, and she dozed off.
Cautious not to wake her, I eased off the sofa and crept from the room. She hadn’t said yes to coming to Devon. But I was packing her bag anyway.
Then doubt set in. Halfway up the stairs, I turned and sat. There were two major problems here. I had barely begun to work through them when Edward appeared at the foot of the stairs, and, for a split second, that startled me, too. No matter that we’d been in each other’s company since last night, for so long before this I had gone it alone. The idea that he was here for me, tall and dark, sensible and strong, still stunned me.
Sitting one step lower so that his head was that little bit closer to mine, he whispered, “It’s the right thing to do.”
“I know,” I whispered back, but my hands were clenched between my knees.
“You’re worried about exposure.”
“For starters.”
“That won’t happen, Maggie,” he whispered, looking sideways at me. “Nina was the only one who figured it out fromThe Devon Timespiece.”
“That we know of.” And here I was today, AWOL with Edward. In theory, only Joyce and Kevin knew that, but theory only worked if no one else figured it out.
“Nina’s the exception,” he came back. “She’s from a world wheresuspicion is a player. You know her secrets, so she wants to know yours. The rest of the people in Devon? They’re not looking. You and your mother are Reids, but the accident involved a Cooper—and in Massachusetts, not Connecticut. There’s no reason for people to make the connection.”
“But I can’t tell Mom not to talk. All it would take is an innocent comment, like,Mackenzie had a bad time after the crash,and I’m outed.”
“She’ll only be with good friends. Would it be so bad if they knew?”
Yes, the frightened voice in me said, but his pale-blue eyes were a beacon in the shadowed stairway, guiding me somewhere new.
