“And you think she’s innocent?” I shot back. “You think I’m innocent? You think neither one of us has done things wrong? Ask yourself why I’ve never talked about her or why she’s never been here before. Grace,” I said. “Everyone in the world is guilty of something.”
“Not like me,” she said, but gave me a quick hug before slipping out the door.
***
Cornelia came early Sunday to meet my mother and insisted, Margaret later told me somewhat wryly, on staying through Nina’s visit. And how had Nina known my mother was there? Me. I had called her. I kept remembering what she had said about being totally alone, kept hearing the desperation in her words, and I figured that if anyone could handle her, it was my mother. Besides, it wasn’t like Nina didn’t already know the worst.
After the fact, I realized that Nina’s questions might tip off Cornelia. But the questions hadn’t gone anywhere near there. They had focused on The Buttered Scone, which fascinated Nina and which Margaret was only too happy to describe.
Then came Joe Hellinger and his wife, then Joyce again, then Edward with lunch, then my friend Alex. If I had wanted Margaret to see my life here, I couldn’t have asked for better. These people gave her a glimpse of it without her ever having to leave the Inn. By the time I was done with work early Sunday afternoon, though, she wanted to see where I lived. I told her she ought to rest instead. The woman was recovering from a broken hip, for God’s sake. She had been half-dead Friday morning.
But she didn’t seem half-dead now. She was the Margaret McGowan Reid who kept going no matter what. She actually seemed exhilarated. And how could I fight that?
So we put on our jackets—Mom snug in the new little quilted number Liam had brought her. She had Kevin’s scarf around her neck. The scarf was one-hundred percent merino wool, she informed me, though all I could do was wonder how Kevin knew that one of the dozens of shades of green in the hand-dyed wool would perfectly match my mother’s eyes.
Walking slowly, elbows linked, we went down to the truck. I still had my doubts about what we were doing, but when she managed to climb up into the seat with some care but no mishap, despite the cast on her wrist and the cane that she hadn’t quite mastered, I let it go. I desperately wanted her to see my home, and while it didn’t have to be today, it actually did. I had to keep busy until four or I’d go nuts.
It was the second time in as many weeks that I had the responsibility of a passenger, the first being when Chris popped up in my backseat. I hadn’t had a choice then; I was already on the road. I did have a choice now. I knew I needed to do this.
But if I was just the slightest bit uneasy, my mother was not. As blaséas could be, she said that Liam had offered to drive, but she didn’t want to go with him. She wanted me.
And how could I fightthat?
We talked more during that short drive than I believe we’d ever done in a car. She told me how much she admired Cornelia and how she sensed a lonely soul in Nina. She knew that Joe and his wife didn’t let me spend a Thanksgiving or Christmas alone, and that friends like Alex and Joyce and Kevin were loyal and kind. Hearing it in her voice made me see how rich my life here truly was.
“They’re very different from the friends you had before,” she remarked with a flippancy that was so the old Margaret that I was momentarily taken back. I think she was, too, because she shot me an uneasy look, as if suddenly remembering where she was and why. “I didn’t mean—”
“You’re right,” I said, because tiptoeing around didn’t work as well as it had even a day ago. Too much in the past had been misleading. What I had taken for disapproval may well have been my mother torn between what she felt and what my father believed. He had been a good man inmany regards; I wasn’t speaking ill of the dead, either. But he was no longer here.
“I loved my art school friends,” I said. “We were all different, but we accepted that. After I got married, the differences just seemed to grow.”
“You were successful. They weren’t.”
“Maybe not commercially. Artistically, I couldn’t begin to compare. But what I meant was lifestyle. Remember the Labor Day cookout we threw at our house that last year? You and Dad drove up for it.”
“Oh, I do,” my mother said dryly. “The flower arrangements were gorgeous. You had a caterer grilling everything imaginable, and the place was packed, one beautiful person after another.”
“I thought you’d be impressed,” I said, mocking myself, then braked sharply when a deer leapt from the woods onto the road. It had the antlers of a male and was quickly followed by a doe. I hadn’t been speeding, still my heart raced, but the fear quickly ebbed. “Look,” I whispered. It was a typical spring sight in Devon, but it never failed to enchant me. I watched until the elegant creatures disappeared into the woods on the other side of the road.
Accelerating again, I said, “My friends that Labor Day weren’t real friends. They were part of a life, like the flowers and the caterer. And the house. And the cars.”
“And the skinny,” said Mom.
“Yup.” I turned onto the hill road and started up, feeling an anticipation that had my heart clenching in its old familiar way. I wanted her approval, of course I did. It was only normal, right? And after all we’d been through, the years of my disappointing her?
“You drive this in winter?” she asked.
I shot her a nervous look, but she was more fearful than critical. And I knew that reaction, had felt it myself once or twice at the start, when the beauty of the forest had been offset by the rawness of the narrow road. Today, though, April was beginning, and I swear I could smell it in the drying mud, the new growth, the hope.
“Roads like this are a way of life here,” I said. “So is plowing. My guycomes at least three times for each snowstorm. That’s also why I have a truck.” Only then remembering her broken hip, I asked in concern, “Too bumpy?”
“No, no. It’s fine.” But she sounded worried. “I shudder to think of you up here alone.”
“You hate it,” I said.
“I haven’tseenit. Much farther?”
When we rounded the last turn, I didn’t have to say a thing. There was only one road, one house, one forest in a dead end.
