functions that suited her role as the wife of the most important man in Wharton.
Growing up, dinners had been quiet affairs, her father an intimidating frown at the head of the table, where he ate in silence, reading the paper or a book, unless her mother was reporting one of Tara’s crimes against the rules of comportment for the town’s leading family. Then he would redden before tersely declaring Tara’s punishment.
Looking at her mother’s face, Tara saw lines that hadn’t been there three years ago when she’d come for Faye’s wedding. Her mother was nearly sixty, so her age had to show some. The veins in her hands were more pronounced, the skin crinkled like parchment.
One day she’ll be gone and you don’t even know her.
The thought startled Tara. Her visits home from college had been short—full of tense silences and brittle exchanges, with her parents lobbing thinly veiled insults about her classes, her major, her appearance and her ideas—so after she graduated, she’d never returned. Why put everyone through that misery? Faye visited Tara twice a year and they spoke often by phone.
Tara had lost the chance to connect with her father, but her mother was right here. Could they make peace? Become friends? That might be too much to ask. But, dammit, she was going to try. The idea filled her with tenderness, hope and a sense of purpose.
She could hear Dimitri speaking to someone in his office, so she sat with her mother for a few more minutes to settle her own emotions.
When Tara heard Dimitri’s office door open, and what sounded like two people saying goodbye, she said, “Mom?”
“Huh?” Her mother jerked to a sit, her face blank, eyes dazed.
“It’s all done. We can leave.”
“Oh. Yes. Well.” Her mother seemed to push past her confusion and gather herself, sitting taller. “I was a bit sleepy.” She tugged her blazer straight, poked a strand of hair in place and arranged her smile. Tara averted her gaze, feeling like she’d accidentally seen behind the Wizard of Oz’s curtain, and the Wizard preferred his privacy.
They went to Dimitri’s door.
“You just missed Mr. Ryland,” he said with a smile.
“We did?” Tara asked, her heart jumping a little.
“He arrived just after we finished.”
She’d wished for Dylan to appear and he had. In high school, they’d believed they could sense each other from far away, draw each other closer by wishing very hard. It made her smile to remember how ridiculously romantic they’d been.
“So it’s official. The auditorium is ours?” her mother asked.
“It is. Our Mr. Ryland gets things done,” Dimitri said.
“I gathered that,” Tara said, looking at her mother, who’d sung Dylan’s praises in the hospital, if in a backhanded way.
Her mother hadn’t minded when Tara started dating Dylan, probably because Tara stopped getting into trouble. Not that Tara and her mother had talked much. Mostly they glared and slammed doors in each other’s faces.
That changed when Tara announced she would be going to Northern Arizona University, the state college Dylan had chosen because of the famous observatory there. Her mother went nuts, railing against Tara choosing a state school when she had more prestigious options, that it was childish to ruin her future over puppy love, which, of course, made Tara even more determined to go there.
Then Dylan changed his mind.
The funeral director held out a card and Tara realized she’d missed why she would need it.
“My email is there,” he said. “To send what you want on the program.”
“Oh. Right. Yes.”
“Where is your mind, Tara?” her mother said.
Lost in the past, where it didn’t belong. She’d better quit that. She needed a clear head and a calm heart to handle what lay ahead—helping her mother, watching over Faye and keeping her business afloat. She had no time or energy to relive lost loves or revisit broken hearts.
* * *
STANDING UNDER AN olive tree in the mortuary parking lot, Dylan looked up from his confirmation text to the bus company to see Tara help her mother into a car. Funny, he’d just been thinking about her.
They used to believe they were so tuned in they could sense each other from across a room...a football field...the whole town.
They’d been so young, so wrapped up in each other.
The embrace at the hospital had been automatic, and it was as if their bodies remembered. She’d melted into him and he’d closed himself around her. He’d felt the same lovesick jolt he used to get when they were reunited after being apart for a