It’ll be here in another couple minutes. Don’t let her in.”
“All right. I’m here,” she repeated. “Whatever you need.”
“Parker? She’s never going to change, so I have to. I didn’t know it would be so painful. I thought it would feel good, good and satisfying. Maybe with a little triumphant thrown in. But it doesn’t. It feels awful.”
“You wouldn’t be you if it didn’t hurt. You did the right thing, if that helps. The right thing for you. And Linda will bounce. You know she will.”
“I want to be mad.” Weary and weepy, Mac pressed her face into her updrawn knees. “It’s so much easier when I’m mad at her. Why does this break my heart?”
“She’s your mother. Nothing changes that. You’re miserable when you let her use you, too.”
“This is worse. But you’ve got a point.”
“The cab’s here. She’s going.”
“Okay.” Mac closed her eyes again. “I’m all right. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Call if you need me before.”
“I will. Thanks.”
SHE COULDN’T WORK UP THE ENTHUSIASM FOR BUBBLES AND candles and wine, but took the hot bath. She put on her oldest flannel pants, a soft comfort. She no longer wanted sleep and thought drudgery might be an answer. She’d clean her bedroom, organize her closet, her dresser, scrub the bathroom for good measure.
It was way past time for household chores and it would keep her busy for hours. Possibly days. Best of all, it was a cleansing, she decided, a symbolic act to go along with her stand with Linda.
Out with the old, in with the new. And everything fresh and ordered when the task was done. Her new life order.
She opened her closet, puffed out her cheeks, expelled a balloon of air. The only way to approach it, she decided, was the way they did it on the improvement shows on TV. Haul it out, sort, toss.
Maybe she could just burn everything and start over. Burning bridges seemed to be her current theme anyway. Squaring her shoulders, she grabbed an armload, tossed it on the bed. By the third load she asked herself why she needed so many clothes. It was a sickness, that’s what it was. No one person needed fifteen white shirts.
Fifty percent, she decided. That would be her goal. To purge out fifty percent of her wardrobe. And she’d buy those nice padded hangers. Color coordinated. And the clear, stackable shoe boxes. Like Parker.
When the contents of her closet lay heaped on her bed, on her sofa, she stood a little wild-eyed. Shouldn’t she have bought the hangers, the boxes first? And one of those closet organizer kits. Drawer dividers. Now all she had was a big, terrible mess and no place to sleep.
“Why, why in God’s name can I run a business, be a business, and not be able to cope with my own life? This is your life, Mackensie Elliot. Big heaps of stuff you don’t know what to do with.”
She would fix it. Change it. Deal with it. God, she’d kicked her own mother out of the house, surely she could deal with clothes and shoes and handbags. She’d cut down on the clutter in her life, in her head. Minimalize, she decided.
She’d go Zen.
Her home, her life, her damn closet would be a place of peace and tranquility. In clear plastic shoe boxes.
Starting now. Today was a new day, a new start, and a new, tougher, smarter, more formidable Mackensie Elliot. She went downstairs for a box of Hefty bags with a gleam in her eye.
The knock on the door struck her with such profound relief she actually shuddered. Parker, she thought. Thank God. What she needed now were the superpowers of Organizer Girl.
Eyes crazed, hair sticking up in spikes, she wrenched open the door. “Parker—oh. Oh. Of course. Perfect.”
“You wouldn’t answer your phone. I know you’re upset,” Carter continued. “If you’d just let me come in, just for a few minutes, to explain.”
“Sure.” She threw up her hands. “Why not. It just caps it off. Let’s have a drink.”
“I don’t want a drink.”
“Right. Driving.” She waved her hands in the air as she stomped toward the kitchen. “I’m not driving.” She slapped a bottle of wine on the counter, got out a corkscrew. “What? No date tonight?”
“Mackensie.”
Somehow, she thought as she attacked the cork, he managed to make her name an apology, and a mild scold. The guy had skills.
“I know how it might have looked. Probably looked. How it looked.” He stepped to the other side of the counter.