CHAPTER ELEVEN
Olivia
“CAN I COME IN?” MY MOTHER ASKS.
Her question breaks me from my shock. “What… what are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you.” She stands, running her hands over her thighs. “It’s been a while.”
“Yes, it has.”
We look at each other for a second before Crystal picks up two bags on the bottom step. My hand shakes as I dig into my pocket for my keys and pass her on the stairs. I unlock the door and push it open, stepping aside to let her enter before me. She smells like lavender. Her favorite scent.
She drops her bag and a square, leather case on the floor, casting a glance around the apartment.
“Cute,” she remarks. “Looks like a place you’d see in a magazine. How to make the most of a small space.”
I follow her to the living room. I can’t stop staring at her, some part of my brain registering the changes wrought by the past three years.
Her pale skin is uncreased by age, and she looks thinner, her pronounced cheekbones emphasizing her blue eyes framed by incredibly thick lashes. Her long hair is the color of wheat, streaked with red in the light, falling in waves around her shoulders. She’s wearing jeans and a loose, floral-print blouse beneath a cream-colored leather jacket.
She’s beautiful. She’s always been beautiful. Slender like a dancer. Small-breasted, lithe. Though I’m a couple of inches shorter than she is, I’m heavier, curvier. Bigger.
Crystal is looking at me as if she’s assessing me the way I am her.
“It’s good to see you, Liv.”
“Thanks.”
“Where were you?” she asks.
“Working.” I go into the kitchen and start to make a pot of coffee just to have something to do. “Where did you get in from?”
“Indianapolis.” She follows me and leans against the doorjamb. “I was visiting some friends.”
“You’re still making jewelry?”
“Yes. I go to art fairs when I can but my car is on its last legs. I need to get it fixed soon.” She glances around the kitchen. “So where’s your husband?”
“He’s…” Shit. I have no idea how to explain that Dean is staying in a hotel without sounding like we’re having marital problems. “He’s working too.”
He’s also coming over in close to an hour.
“He’ll be here soon.” I turn on the coffeepot. “Help yourself to whatever you want from the fridge. I’m going to take a shower.”
I go into the bedroom and strip out of my clothes. Not even the hot spray of the shower eases the apprehension tensing my shoulders. I’d had tonight’s outfit all planned, but I can’t go out with Dean and leave my mother here alone. And certainly he can’t come in and have the evening we’d both been hoping for.
I pull on a pair of jeans and a fleece shirt before returning to the living room.
Crystal is sitting on the sofa, rummaging through her bag. She takes an elastic band and winds her hair up into a long ponytail. Her movements are graceful and unconsciously elegant. Exactly the way I remember.
As a girl, I would watch in silence as my mother brushed and arranged her hair. Then when she’d leave, I would do the same thing with my own hair, looking in the mirror as I tried to copy her movements.
“So how long do you think you’ll be in town?” I ask, attempting to keep my voice casual.
“A few days,” she says. “Can I crash on your sofa?”
Crash on your sofa. Sometimes she’d ask a man that question when she was looking for a place to stay, but far more often than not, she didn’t have to ask because they just invited her. And she didn’t crash on their sofas… she always ended up in their beds.
“No,” I tell her. “There’s really not enough room here, as you pointed out.”
“I don’t take up much space.” She eyes me with a touch of offense. “After all this time, you’re seriously not going to let me stay?”
“Crystal, Dean lives here too. There’s not enough room for the three of us.” I don’t think there’s enough room in Mirror Lake for the three of us.
Dean and Crystal have only met once—for about an hour when we were living in LA. I’d heard from Aunt Stella that Crystal was staying in Riverside, so I contacted her to tell her I was married and ask if we could see her.
We met at a diner in Riverside for lunch. Though Dean already had an intense dislike for Crystal from the things I’d told him, he’d made an effort to be polite. Crystal was faintly hostile, annoyed that I hadn’t told her I was getting married, and then defensive when I’d said I hadn’t known where she was.
All in all, it hadn’t gone well. Since then, Dean has not given a damn where Crystal is or what she’s doing, as long as she stays far away from me.
I look at the clock. My stomach is tight.
“I’ll help you find a hotel room, if you want,” I tell her as I go to the door. “But you can’t stay here.”
I step onto the landing and close the door behind me before going downstairs. Not five minutes later, Dean crosses the street toward the building and opens the foyer door. Warmth fills his expression when he sees me, but his smile fades as he recognizes something is wrong.
“What?” he asks.
I grab his arm and lead him outside, where I know my mother can’t overhear us. My heart seizes with nervousness. I take a breath before speaking.
“Dean, my mother is here.”
“What?” His eyes flash, his body stiffening with that protective instinct I know so well. “When did she arrive?”
“A couple of hours ago.”
“What’s she doing here?”
“She said she wanted to see me.”
“Sure, after all these years, she wants to see you.”
My stomach roils at the irritated tone in his voice. And, unexpectedly, I experience a surge of hurt at the implication that my mother does not, in fact, want to see me.
“Where is she?” Dean asks.
“Upstairs.”
He reaches for the door. I grab his arm.
“Dean, don’t.”
“I want to talk to her.” He yanks his arm from my grip and pulls open the door.
“No!” The word comes out like a bullet, surprising both of us.
He stops and turns to face me. I reach for his arm again. My heart is racing.
“I can handle it,” I tell him. “She asked to stay here, but I told her she couldn’t.”
“Damned right she can’t,” he snaps. “How much money does she want to get the hell out of town?”
“She… she hasn’t asked for any money.”
“She will.” His expression is set hard, all the warmth from just minutes ago dissolved into anger. “Give her whatever she wants, then tell her to go.”
“Dean.” I can’t untangle the emotions spinning through me… lingering shock and confusion that my mother is here, and frustration that my husband is issuing dictates about what I should do.
“I can handle this myself,” I say, my own voice hardening. “She’s my mother. I don’t need you to tell me what to do.”
Irritation darkens his eyes. “Find a hotel room for her. I’ll pay for it, since I doubt she can afford it. I don’t want her near you.”
“Dean! Stop it.” Though I understand the root of his anger—God knows I’ve felt the same thing toward my mother over the years—I’m overcome by the need to keep him out of it, to prove to both him and myself that I can handle it.
I have a sudden flashback to the times I’ve witnessed Dean’s rage toward people he views as a threat—his brother, Tyler Wilkes—and how everything leading up to those encounters and their aftermath almost broke us apart.
Fear stabs through me. Somehow, I manage to get myself between Dean and the door. I put my hands on his chest to keep him from pushing past me.
“Look, I’m going back upstairs,” I tell him. “You go back to the hotel. It’s getting late, so she might stay for one night, but that’s it. I promise, I’ll find a place for her to stay tomorrow.”
His jaw clenches. “I’m coming home tomorrow.”
Of course he is. He’s going to swoop down and spread his eagle wings around me, even if I don’t want to hide behind them anymore.
I’m struck by an unpleasant sense that how we both approach this new situation is critical. I curl my fingers into the lapels of Dean’s coat and yank him toward me.
“Dean.” My voice is stern and unwavering. “Look at me.”
He does. His eyes are still glittering with anger and determination, his mouth compressed into a line. I use all my strength to give him a hard shake.
“Stop it,” I snap. “Just stop it. I’m not a child anymore, and she can’t hurt me the way she once did. Have you forgotten that I walked away from her when I was thirteen years old? I did that by myself. And you sure as hell are not coming home just because she’s here, just so you can stand guard.”
I take a breath and shake him again. “When you come home, professor, you’re coming home for me, for us. You’re coming home because you’re back for good, and because home is where you belong. You are not coming home because you’re angry and need to control everything. You are not coming home to shield me from a woman I’ve barely seen in sixteen years.”
I push on his chest to make him step away. “Now you go back to the hotel and cool off. I’m going to go upstairs and talk to my mother. Don’t you dare call me until tomorrow. In fact, just wait until I call you. Do you understand me?”
For a few seconds, he doesn’t respond, doesn’t even react aside from staring at me with that set expression. Finally, though, he nods. His jaw tightens at the same time, but it’s a definite nod.
“Good.” I move back toward the door. “Go. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
I wait until he turns and walks away, his stride long and rapid. Only when he disappears around the corner do I go back upstairs. A memory pushes at me of last December when I’d let Kelsey deal with an enraged Dean instead of doing it myself.
Not this time.
My heart is pounding hard as I go back into the apartment. Crystal is still in the living room, leafing through a magazine. She glances up.
“Was that your husband?”
“Yes. He had to leave again.”
“He’s not sleeping here?”
“No.” I suddenly wonder why I even care what Crystal thinks of my relationship with Dean. I don’t owe her any explanations. I don’t owe her anything. “Actually, he’s staying in a hotel down the street for a few days.”
“Oh.” She frowns, clearly coming to the obvious, though mistaken, conclusion. “So, what’s the problem with me staying here then?”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea,” I tell her. “That’s the problem.”
The problem is also that I’m pretty sure Dean was right when he said Crystal doesn’t have the money for a hotel room.
I won’t let Dean pay for one either, and I’m not too enthused about the idea of using my money, which is earmarked for the café. But I will if I have to.
“You can stay for one night,” I tell Crystal. “Then you’ll have to find another place to stay. There are a lot of hotels in town. I’ll help you pay for one, if you need it.”
“I don’t want your money, Liv.” She shoots me a look that seems to freeze the air between us. “Especially not so that you can kick me out of your house.”
A reflexive protest rises in my throat that I’m not kicking her out, but I swallow it back down. Because I am sort of kicking her out.
“Look, you need to find another place to stay,” I tell her. “That’s it.”
She shrugs, as if it makes no difference to her. I go to the bedroom and change into a nightshirt, then get some clean sheets and pillows from the closet. When I turn, I see her standing in the doorway watching me. I suddenly wish I’d put on my bathrobe.
“You’ve gained weight,” she remarks.
“A little.” No way will I tell her it’s the last few pounds of my pregnancy weight that I still haven’t quite shed.
“More than a little.” Her gaze travels over my body through my nightshirt. “But it suits you. You have the kind of figure that would look disproportionate if you were too much slimmer.”
I have no idea if she’s complimenting me or slamming me. Or both.
“Uh… thanks?”
She smiles. “Sorry. I meant that you look good.”
“So do you.” I go into the living room and spread the sheets on the sofa. “There’s an extra toothbrush and toothpaste in the bathroom drawer.”
She goes into the bathroom, and I hear her moving around, the water running, drawers opening and closing, before she emerges in a thin cotton robe, her hair twisted into a loose knot at the nape of her neck.
I get out my old quilt and toss it onto the sofa. “So… I’m sorry about…”
I don’t even know what to say. Your mother? My grandmother? Elizabeth Winter?
“Your mother,” I finally say.
Crystal shrugs. “Hadn’t seen her in well over twenty years. Didn’t even know she was sick.”
An uncharitable thought rises like pond scum in my mind. Does Crystal know about the inheritance? Is that why she’s here?
I study her as she puts a few things back into her suitcase. Nothing on her face would indicate that her mother’s death affected her in any way.
“You had no contact with her?” I ask carefully.
“Why would I want to? She threw me out when I got pregnant with you. Then she refused to take us in when I needed her help after we left your father.”
“How did you hear that she’d died?” I ask.
“Stella. She had my last address and sent me a note. I’d assumed she told you too.”
I make a noncommittal noise. I wonder if this means my mother never heard from Elizabeth Winter’s lawyer.
I shift the topic of conversation, and we discuss our lives in a polite, cordial manner. Crystal asks about places Dean and I have lived, tells me where she’s traveled and what she’s been doing.
She spent a year in Seattle working at a jewelry store, and has lived in LA, Austin, and Denver. Albuquerque, Portland, San Francisco. She’s worked in nightclubs, hair salons, clothing stores, yoga studios, food co-ops, florists. She’s sold her jewelry at art fairs, beaches, craft shows, street festivals.
“Do you like it?” I ask. “Living that way?”
“Who wouldn’t like that kind of freedom?”
Me, for one, though I don’t bother telling her that. She already knows.
“What’s in there?” I ask curiously, nodding to the black case by the sofa.
“My jewelry.”
“Can I see some of it?”
A faint surprise flashes in her eyes. “You want to see my jewelry?”
“Sure.”
She hefts the case onto the coffee table and unlocks it. She opens little compartments and drawers to show me dozens of pieces—gemstone necklaces, beaded earrings, shell brooches, dozens of the woven bracelets and anklets I remember from years ago.
“The detail work is beautiful.” I study a blue-and-white bracelet woven in a crisscross pattern.
“I took a few classes, learned some new techniques.”
I look at a necklace with wire-wrapped green stones and a brooch painted with the image of a flower. They’re pretty, obviously done with care and more expertise than I can recall Crystal possessing.
“Aunt Stella once said you wanted to be a fashion designer.”
My words come out unbidden, almost as if someone else had spoken them. I tighten my fist on the brooch and look at my mother.
She doesn’t respond right away, but the edge of her jaw tenses. “So?”
“Is it true?”
“I wanted a lot of things, Liv.” She puts a few earrings into a drawer and slams it shut. “Doesn’t mean I got any of them.”
I’m struck with the urge to apologize—I know her life didn’t turn out the way she wanted because she got pregnant with me. But I can’t apologize for having been born. I have to swallow hard to push the I’m sorry back down.
She continues putting the jewelry back in the case. “So what else has Stella said?”
“She said my… my father regretted how things turned out.”
The words my father sound unfamiliar in my mouth. I don’t talk about him at all. Don’t think about him. He’s a ghost, there and yet not there.
He was in my life for seven years—long enough for memories and images to bury themselves like seeds in my mind. But they never grew because Crystal was the sun, bright, hot, blinding. Whatever memories of my father I’d wanted to cling to withered under the force of her light.
Now, unexpectedly, they push through the dirt. There’s a man with close-cropped hair and a youthful swagger. Tall and broad, a silver chain around his neck. He smelled of sawdust and sweat. Worked as a carpenter. He died in a car accident when I was eleven.
Crystal turns to put the bracelet away, slamming the little drawer closed.
“Your father should have regretted a lot of things,” she says.
“Do you?” Again, it’s like someone else is speaking.
“Jesus, Liv.” Bitterness discolors her voice. “My whole life is a regret.”
The next morning, after I tell Crystal about the Wonderland Café, she comes with me to see the building. I take her on a tour of the interior, telling her our plans for the lower-level Alice in Wonderland theme and the Wizard of Oz rooms upstairs.
“When you were a kid, you used to love places like this,” she remarks, peering out the upstairs window at the view of the lake.
For some reason, the band around my heart loosens a little at her remark. It’s an odd comfort to realize that she remembers something about me when I was a child. Maybe I hadn’t been as invisible to her as I’d so often felt.
“Hi, Liv.” Allie’s cheerful voice precedes her entrance into the room.
“Allie, this is my mother,” I tell her. “Crystal Winter.”
“Oh, I didn’t know you were in town.” Allie extends a hand to my mother. “Liv showed me your commercial a while ago.”
My heart drops. Tension rolls through Crystal, straightening her spine.
“I didn’t even know Liv had that tape,” she remarks.
Allie glances at me with uncertainty, appearing to sense that this is forbidden territory. “Um, it was fun to watch.”
“I’m sure it was,” Crystal says.
“So, Allie, isn’t Brent coming this morning?” I ask.
“He should be here any minute,” she replies. “I’m going to finish up in the front room.”
She gives me an apologetic glance before leaving. Crystal is still looking at me.
“I thought I got rid of that tape years ago,” she says. “I distinctly remember throwing it away.”
“I… I got it out of the trash.” I’d been nine years old. Crystal had gone out for a singing gig at a nightclub, and I’d rummaged through greasy TV dinner trays to retrieve the tape from the garbage.
“Why did you do that?” she asks.
I have no idea. I didn’t understand my mother. I just wanted something of her, even an old VHS tape of a cereal commercial. A cherub-faced blonde girl who looked so happy and seemed like she had a bright future.
“I wanted to keep it,” I finally admit. “You can have it back, if you want.”
“No.” Her voice is chilly. “I don’t want it.”
A clutter of voices drifts up the staircase. I tilt my head toward the door.
“We should probably go,” I suggest.
“I thought you needed to work.”
“Yeah, but you don’t want to hang around here.”
“I can help out.” She digs into her pocket for a rubber band and starts to tie her hair up in a ponytail. “Just tell me what to do.”
That’s a role reversal, if I’ve ever heard one. She was always the one who told me what to do. After suggesting that she help strip the wallpaper from the front room, I go back downstairs.
I step onto the porch and call Dean on my cell. He answers before the first ring ends, but to his credit he waits for me to bring up the subject of my mother.
“As soon as I’m done here, I’ll call around and find a place for her to stay,” I assure him.
His breath escapes on a sigh. “Okay. You call me if you need me, right?”
“Of course.” My stomach knots. “What time is the meeting?”
“Three.”
“Look, why don’t I come to the Firefly Cottage tonight?” I ask. “I know we have stuff to talk about, and I want to hear about the meeting. No one will bother us there.”
“What time?”
“Seven. But promise me you won’t get all blustery and caveman, okay? Just be cool.”
“As a cucumber, baby.”
Though he forces a light tone and I laugh, the tension between us doesn’t dissipate much. We discuss our plans for the day before I end the call, waving at Max Lyons who is crossing the street with a tray of takeout coffees.
“Trying to stay on your daughter’s good side, huh?” I ask, holding the door open for him.
“You got it. She’s like a piranha if you get on her bad side.” He puts the coffees on a table and looks around at the disarray of the place. “Good start.”
“The tearing down is always easier than the putting back together,” I remark.
He smiles. “But the putting back together is always worth it.”
We both glance up as Allie comes downstairs with her portfolio in hand, Crystal following.
“Liv, your mother was just telling me about her jewelry design,” Allie says, and her worried expression elicits a wave of apprehension in me.
“I offered to help with the murals,” Crystal explains. “Allie said you weren’t sure what to do with the borders, or along the tops of the walls.”
“Um, a few friends of mine are going to help too,” Allie says. “Don’t want there to be too many cooks or anything.”
While I’m grateful that Allie is trying to provide me with an excuse to reject Crystal’s offer, I give her a reassuring shake of my head. It’s not Allie’s job to play referee between me and my mother.
“That’s nice of you,” I tell Crystal. “We’d appreciate your help.”
Allie moves to pick up one of the coffees, shooting me an encouraging, it’ll be okay smile. She introduces her father to Crystal before heading back upstairs.
Max steps forward to shake Crystal’s hand, and I see him look at her with that purely male appreciation that she’s so accustomed to receiving. She’s beautiful with her long hair pulled back to reveal the elegant lines of her neck, wearing a soft, pastel pink T-shirt that stretches across her breasts and slender waist.
To my shock, my reaction is visceral, as my heart kicks into gear and my stomach tenses. That look, that blatant appreciation of her beauty, was always the beginning.
After that, the men would invite Crystal—and me, by extension—into their houses, trailers, apartments. I’d try to be invisible, try not to exist, try not to wonder how long we’d live with this man this time.
Inevitably Crystal would go into the man’s bedroom with him, and I was alone and anxious in another strange place, unable to avoid hearing the moans and grunting as I waited for my mother to come back out again because she was all I had.
I turn away, grabbing a cup of coffee. I take a quick swallow, hoping the heat will burn off the anxiety icing my whole body.
I hurry into the other room, where Brent and his friends are working. I get a wallpaper stripper and start tearing off long strips of paper. Kelsey comes in through the back door, her arms loaded with catalogs of kitchen supplies.
“Marianne asked me to drop these off,” she tells me. “And I took out a few ads for the head chef position, so you should expect applications soon.”
“Great, thanks.” I follow her to the front room, somehow calmer in her no-bullshit presence.
Crystal and Max are still talking, but they break apart when I step in to introduce Kelsey to my mother. Kelsey’s eyes narrow behind her glasses, but her voice is pleasant as she and Crystal exchange greetings.
A rush of affection for Kelsey fills me. Like Allie, she doesn’t know all the details of my relationship with Crystal or my childhood, but she knows it’s both painful and complicated. For her, that’s enough to be wary of my mother.
“So how long are you staying?” Kelsey asks.
“I don’t know yet.” Crystal reaches back to tighten the band around her ponytail, the movement arching her back just enough to press her breasts forward. “I just wanted to see Liv. My mother passed away recently, so I was thinking I should go to Phoenix and see about her house and belongings at some point. Sooner rather than later, I suppose, since Liv won’t let me stay with her.”
A hundred curses race through my head and heat my blood. Somehow I manage to keep the anger from my voice as I say, “You know how small our apartment is. There isn’t room.”
“I wasn’t complaining, Liv,” she replies. “I’m saying that if I don’t find a place to stay, I’ll have to leave. And I’d hate to do that so soon considering I just got here.”
“I told you I’d help you pay for a hotel.”
“I don’t want to take your money. That’s not why I came to visit you.” She looks at me with something resembling disappointment. “But never mind. I’ll figure something out.”
She shrugs as if to say there’s no help for it. A tense silence descends. I slide my gaze to Max Lyons. He’s looking at my mother.
Of course he is. I know exactly what happens next. He’ll come to her rescue, pained by the thought of her having to leave Mirror Lake after she just arrived to visit her daughter.
He’ll offer her a place to stay, and she’ll be ever so grateful as she agrees to go home with him. She’ll go into his house, into his bedroom, and in exchange she’ll let him into her body, and she’ll stay with him until she gets antsy or bored or just needs a change, and then she’ll leave and find someone else.
If it were any other man, I wouldn’t care.
But even though I don’t know him well, Max Lyons is attached to my circle of friends, my life here in Mirror Lake, my new business, even my husband.
I still shouldn’t care. He’s an adult who can do whatever he wants. I have no right to be angry if he hooks up with my mother.
He begins speaking to her in a low voice. She nods, keeping a slight distance between them. She’s never been explicitly sexy, never needed low-cut blouses or tight skirts. She’s secure in her own skin, knows that she’s beautiful, knows how much men desire her. She knows how to get what she wants by giving them what they want.
My throat aches suddenly. I see Kelsey watching Max and Crystal too. Her eyes are ice-blue behind her glasses. She turns and walks to the door.
“Hey, Liv, get those orders in to Marianne soon, okay?” Kelsey calls over her shoulder, letting the front door slam shut behind her.
“Crystal, we should get going,” I say, interrupting her and Max’s cozy chat. “I thought you might want to look around town for a while.”
“Oh, sure.” She glances down at her clothes. “Can we stop at the apartment so I can change?”
“Okay.” I grab my satchel, tightening my hand on the strap as Crystal approaches me. Tension grips my shoulders. The scent of lavender fills my nose.
“I was just thinking it over,” I tell her. “Maybe you can stay with me for a couple of days after all.”