Lilly thought Charlotte would press her to eat, but she didn’t. “Okay,” she said. “It’ll be there waiting for you when you’re ready.”
Lilly looked around, expecting to see Sloane and Julian, but Charlotte seemed to be alone. “Where is everyone?”
“Julian grabbed his camera and went out to take some pictures. Sloane’s not up yet. She’s still on California time. Sadly, so am I, but I have to work so I can’t stay in bed. Would you like to start going through your mother’s belongings while I take care of a few things here?”
Luca’s delivery had been on Lilly’s mind all night. She didn’t want there to be anything that made her look like someone who shouldn’t be taken in, but even still, she couldn’t bring herself to touch her mother’s possessions.
“I don’t want to see any of it,” she said.
Charlotte scooted her chair back. “Because going through those boxes would make you too sad about your mom?”
“I guess,” she said. “I just don’t want to deal with it. Where are they, anyway?”
“The boxes? In the storage room outside.”
Lilly thought of her report cards. “Did you already look through everything?”
“No. It felt a little intrusive to just... dive right in. I wanted to wait for you.”
Lilly had never had an adult treat her as if her thoughts, feelings and opinions really mattered. “You care about that?”
“Of course I do.”
“What if I don’t want to see any of her stuff ever again?”
“That would be okay. Just let me know.”
“Why doyouwant to see it?” she asked.
“Because other than talking to you, it’s my only way of getting to know Sabrina. But there’s no rush. We can wait a fewdays, see how you feel. Maybe you’ll change your mind. I have a lot to do, anyway.”
Lilly threaded her fingers through the strings hanging from her cutoffs. “What do you have to do?”
“Start my next book.”
“Is that what you’re doing now?”
She sighed. “I wish. I’m answering emails. My editor is asking which narrator I’d prefer for the audio version, so I’ve been checking out the options. She’s also looking for some input on the cover, but it’s hard to say what the cover should be like when I don’t even know what the story’s going to be about.”
Lilly typically tried to keep her distance from Charlotte and Charlotte’s friends. She had to depend on them for everything, but the last thing she wanted was to let herself get sucker punched by hoping for and expecting a good outcome only to be handed off to some authority or other. Still, at Charlotte’s remark, she stepped forward.
“You don’t know what your next book is about?”
Worry lines creased Charlotte’s forehead as she shook her head. “I’ve been surfing the internet, trying to find a good idea.”
“How long does it take you to write a book?”
“Well, I’ve only written one, and the first isn’t anything to judge by. WithPlaying for Keeps, I was sort of feeling my way through the dark, teaching myself the craft as I went along, so it was an extended process.”
“You’ll be able to do it faster this time?”
“Theoretically.”
Lilly knew what that word meant and hated the concern that welled up. She didn’t want to feel what she’d felt so often for her mother. It was too hard to take care of the adults around her. She’d done her best with Sabrina, but nothing seemedto help. Someone always said something he or she shouldn’t, or her boss insisted she do something a different way and she didn’t like it, or a customer tried to stiff her and that gave her an excuse to lose her temper, which meant she’d get fired if she didn’t quit.
Usually, Sabrina quit. Then she acted as if she’d had no choice, that the working conditions were just too terrible to stay. And the same thing went for the men she got with. It was all great at the start, but only went downhill from there.
“How long do you have?”
