loved him like I love Edward, meaning in ways that had less to do with expectation than a wildly beating heart. But that felt too personal, like I was asking about sex. So I went to what haunted me still.
“And when he died? Weren’t you freed?”
She rested the mug on her cast. “I should have been. But he was my husband, and he was suddenly dead. I thought I was honoring what he would have wanted. I thought I owed him that. I wasn’t thinking straight—” She stopped short. “Actually, that’s not true. I was thinking exactly the way a woman with my marriage history would think. Now I’m not.”
“What changed?”
“Your brother leaving,” she said so quickly that I knew she had given it plenty of thought. “As long as he was around, I could tell myself the problem was you. When he up and left, too, I realized it was me. My failing. My fault. I couldn’t even blame your father. He’d been dead too long by then. And suddenly I was alone, for the first time in my life, totally alone.”
Now I was feeling sorry for her. “You have friends. And you have the bakery, you have Annika and the bakers and the high school girls who come in after school.”
“Not the same,” Margaret said with a dismissive wave of her casted wrist, and suddenly the way she looked at me was jarring. Mothers had answers. Right now, mine did not. There was uncertainty in her expression, in her semi-slouch, even in the generic Spa robe that was way too big for her frame. “The old model isn’t any good, but I’m not sure what the new one should be.”
“Nor I,” I said with feeling, then qualified. “I mean, I can say the same thing about myself. I had it all figured out. Now I don’t.”
“If you’re worried about the meeting with that reporter and your friend—”
“I am.”
“Have a lawyer there,” said the woman who might have lived a charade at home, but had single-handedly founded and managed a thriving business.
* * *
We ordered breakfast, which arrived in less time than it took me to shower, put on makeup, and dress. When I left my bedroom, the round eating table was covered by a crisp white cloth that held two formal place-settings and double servings of maple bacon, scrambled eggs, thick wheat toast, fresh berries, and clotted cream, not to mention garnishes of grilled tomato, three kinds of jam, and butter in its own small tub with the Inn logo embossed on the top. And almond milk for my mother. A full glass. I set it in front of her in a way that said I expected her to drink the whole thing.
It wasn’t until we began to eat that I saw Margaret studying my made-up face, my knotted-back hair, my navy scrubs. “You’re going to work,” she deduced.
Had the statement held accusation, I might have called in sick, which would have been ridiculous, of course, since I would be immediately seen as a fraud when I went out, which I would definitely have done. I wanted to drive my mother around town. I wanted to show her my life.
But her voice held no accusation. She was a workaholic herself. I remembered once when I was home from college, I had found her in her sewing room late at night, typing on her computer while my father slept.
And didn’t that take on new meaning now?
“Yes. Work.” I bit into my toast, chewed and swallowed, then said a nonchalant, “You know what I do, don’t you?”
“Makeup.”
I nodded. “There’s an event at the Inn this weekend. It’s a statewide political thing, apparently boring, because the Spa is booked solid.”
“You, too?”
“I get spillovers from treatments. So yes, me too.”
“Will your friend be free by four tomorrow?” I was slow to follow, I was that good at denial. “Grace,” Mom specified. “She does massage.”
I was amused in a wary way. “How do you know that?”
“It was in one of the articles I read.”
“Ah. Got it.” But I really did not want to talk about Grace. The thought of meeting with Ben Zwick upset my stomach.
“Did you ever do massage?” my mother segued from Grace to ask.
“I actually started with it before gravitating to makeup. Makeup is more artistic.”
“Why that and not clay?”
I studied my toast, before setting it back on the plate and raising my eyes. “I couldn’t. I needed something different.”