“It is my belief that she misses you and wants to get to know you again. Your grandmother died a little while ago. Were they close?”
I open my mouth to answer yes, but then reconsider. Waipo lived in the house and they worked together, but were they close? I only assumed they were. “I don’t know.”
“Whether they were or not, it’s a sure thing she misses her mother and she’s reassessing a lot of her life, don’t you think?”
I poke at the glittery tiaras on the table. Mom was right: Repositioning them under the light gives them an eye-catching sparkle. I want to buy one so I can be a princess. “Probably.”
“You were gone from the time you were twenty,” Ana says. “Theysay your teen years are the formative ones, but I think that’s wrong. After twenty is when you turn into a person.”
“‘Miss Stacy told me long ago that by the time I was twenty my character would be formed, for good or evil,’” I quote idly.
“Anne of Green Gables, nice one.”
“Thanks, but it wasAnne of the Island. Mom could have reached out during those years.”
Ana picks up one of my blotters and sprays it absently to wave under her nose. “Again, I don’t know anything about your relationship, but you seem almost closed off with her now. Would you have been open if she’d asked you to come back home?”
“She never did,” I mumble.
“Oh.” Ana bites her lip. “Because she was giving you space?”
I shrug. The lack of invitations stung until I reframed them in my mind as what I’d wanted in the first place. If Mom was more welcoming, would I have actually ended up going back home? She seemed content to have me gone, as if with no power, I had nothing to offer. It wasn’t my plan to have this turn into a therapy session, but the words come out before I can stop them.
“It’s fine to say she wants to catch up on lost time now, but the only thing that matters to her is the store. It always has been.”
“Then why is she here and not there?” Ana asks.
“Because she wants me to come back and run it with her,” I say firmly. Ana doesn’t need to know the real reason Mom’s in Toronto.
Ana’s eyebrows rise. “Really? She didn’t give me that impression at all. She was asking me a lot about how I structure my online store and why I decided to share the space.”
“Trust me, it’s what she’s always wanted.”
Ana shifts her weight from foot to foot. “Did she say that, or did you assume it?”
The door opens and we spin around, expecting to see Mom. It’s two women, one of whom calls out, “Excuse me, can we get some helphere?” before we can greet them. She’s pointing at Ana’s stock, so I go to my counter to make some notes about my new collections.
“What do you mean, you don’t have it in red?” The nasal voice breaks my concentration.
Ana’s low voice drifts over. “We’re sold out. The last one went yesterday.”
“Go to the back and check. Don’t you know who I am? I have almost ten thousand followers on social media. I can, like, break your store.”
I watch Ana walk to the back, where I know she’ll count to twenty and come back out full of apologies, then peek over my laptop to better see who she’s dealing with. They’re in their twenties, one dressed in high black boots and a black miniskirt that looks like it’s made of recycled sweatpants. The other has blue shadow covering her eyes like a bandit mask, and a baby doll head on a white plastic chain around her neck. I can’t tell which one is bitching at Ana. They both have their phones out.
“Hiiiii, pretty babies!” squeals Lady Color into the screen. “Oh my God, you know I am obsessed with sequins. I’m crying right now.”
“Sorry,” Ana says to the pair, who are giggling over some long gloves. “We’re sold out, but I did find this.”
I peek across to see her hand over a pair of suspenders with rainbow sequins. Lady Color wrinkles her nose. “Eww, do you think I’m a clown or something?”
Ana, to her credit, does not look at the baby doll–head necklace. She laughs. “Oh, sorry. No worries. You’re right, they’re hard to pull off.”
There’s no way the influencer’s going to fall for that, but to my surprise, it’s the woman in the sweat skirt who snatches them. “I love them.”
“Olivia, those are mine,” whines her friend. “I’m already obsessed with them.”
Whatisn’tthis woman obsessed with? I turn back to my screen as Ana magically finds another cool item—a pair of black iridescent legwarmers—to make both women happy.
