“Oh.” She seemed surprised by the gray siding, the oak door, the gabled roof. “It’s not very rustic.”
I laughed nervously. “That’s what I told my realtor when she first drove me here.” Hurrying down from the truck, I ran around to her side, and helped her down and then up the walk.
There were no fanfares, but the moment felt momentous. I’m not sure I had dreamed of bringing my mother here; I’m not sure I had dared. The fact that she was here of her own free will—even at her insistence—was something. My eyes teared, which was better, I supposed, than having a chest freeze, but the tears disappeared the instant I opened the door and Jonah raced out, to which Mom said another surprised, “Oh.”
His leaving was a good thing. By the time he returned from the woods, she seemed legitimately charmed by what she saw of the downstairs of my home, and while she remained oddly afraid of Jonah, she loved Hex and Jinx. Sensing that, they fought for space on her lap, which freed me to give equal time to my dog, while I answered questions about what it was like to live in the woods, how I got my mail, where my water came from, and whether I was ever lonely or frightened.
My mother had always asked questions. Some were innocent, some pointed, some accusatory as rhetorical questions could be. Looking back through a different shade now, I realized that many had been couched withYour father wants to knoworIf I don’t ask, your father will.
Today, she might have asked for an hour and I wouldn’t have minded. I could tell she was intrigued. There were times when I heard the samefear as when we started up the road—but hell, hadn’t I told Edward she was no scout? Weaving through the questions, though, was a thread of acceptance. To my starved heart, a thread was a truckful.
When she absolutely, positively insisted, we climbed to the second floor. Given a choice, I’d have saved that part for another day. She had a broken hip, and while her PT encouraged stair-climbing, the jostling in the truck couldn’t have helped. And then there was my bed. Mom was a stickler for hospital corners, and there was nothing here but a tangle of sheets. The last time I slept here—Edward and I, actually, though she didn’t need to know that—was Friday morning, right before I learned about her hip, and I hadn’t wasted time neatening up before we left.
She didn’t say anything about the unmade bed, but when she saw Liam’s belongings cluttering the loft, she wondered aloud, with distress, when he planned to get his own place. She spared me a response by asking if I had any Tylenol, which I did. I went to the bathroom and opened the medicine chest. After shaking out two pills, I closed it again.
And there, in the mirror, my mother’s stricken eyes met mine. Her voice was a pained whisper. “Why is that there?”
My mug shot. I swallowed. “It’s who I am.”
“Who you were.”
“I’ll always be that person. I can’t erase the past.”
“Can’t forgive yourself? Can’t feel worthy of love?” she asked, capturing the gist of it in two quick questions.
How did you know?I might have asked if the huge knot in my throat hadn’t blocked sound. My mother’s arms came around me, then, and her weight settled against my back as if for support. When she buried her face in my shoulder so that I wouldn’t see her shame, I knew she was talking about herself.
***
I forgave her. Absolutely, unconditionally, and irrevocably, I did. I now understood all she had given up of her inner self to keep her marriage intact, and I would have loved her for that, even if I hadn’t loved her justbecause she was my mother. The apology she made in my bathroom—a silent, stoically poignant Margaret apology—was the icing on the cake, as she would have said.
And me? I wanted to forgive myself, truly I did. I wanted to feel worthy of love. Butworthywent beyond Edward’s declarations. It went beyond the love I did feel when his dark head rose, his pale eyes held mine, and he buried himself deep inside me. It went beyond my mother’s tentative touch with the fingers that extended beyond her cast—my shoulder now, then my arm or my hand—as we drove back to the Inn. For someone who had never been a toucher, she was trying.
Worthywas about what I felt inside, and the closer we got to that meeting at the Inn, the more that feeling was dread. Right now, I had more than I deserved. Past and present were coming together in ways I couldn’t have imagined just weeks ago. And it was good.
One missedSTOPsign, though, and it would be gone. Five years ago, theSTOPsign was hidden by leaves on the side of the road. This time, it was crystal clear in the shape of a meeting that I had myself set up to help a friend. Now, turning off the Blue, passing under the covered bridge that spanned the river, and approaching the gracious stone columns at the front door of the Inn, I had the awful thought that history was about to repeat itself.
24
I was complicit. Of the many negatives in my mind as I waited for Grace to finish her last massage, that topped the list. I was complicit walking her through the Spa, my cocoa-brown scrubs sedate beside her amber ones. I was complicit as we entered the Inn and climbed the stairs to the business wing, and again as I lowered the brass lever, opened the glass double doors, and strode past Currier and Ives. The conference room, with its long mahogany table and Chippendale chairs, was empty, but I had known the men wouldn’t be there. Glass wouldn’t do. We needed privacy. I was as complicit in this knowledge, as I was when I guided Grace into Edward’s office, closed the door, and leaned against it so that she couldn’t escape.
The scene inside was deceptively peaceful, as much the snapshot of a moment in time as the foxhunting oils that hung on the dark-paneled wood. There was Edward, leaning casually against the front of his cluttered desk, looking both in charge and gorgeous in a navy turtleneck andjeans. And Jay in one of the tartan club chairs, round face composed, legs crossed at the knee. Grace might have asked why the lawyer was there if Ben Zwick hadn’t chosen that moment to turn.
He wasn’t as tall or compelling as Edward, though his sandy hair and brown eyes were certainly attractive. Attitude was what gave him stature, and now, despite a glimmer of apprehension when he focused on Grace, his posture held as he left the window.
Grace’s eyes flew to mine in alarm. I returned a tiny headshake, complicit in this, too. I might not know all of what Ben had to say, but I had certainly known he would be here.
Her gaze returned to the men, tripping from face to face in fear. “What is this?” she asked in her Grace-high voice.
“Thanks for coming,” Edward began and gestured her toward the large leather sofa.
She was having none of that. Turning quickly, she reached for the door.
I caught her arm. “You need to listen to what Ben has to say.”
“Hasn’t he already said enough?” she cried. Twisting her head, she pinned the man in question with a killing stare. “You son of a bitch.”
“Sometimes,” he admitted.
