original set back in LA, if that’s what you want. We’ll still be able to get fresh wheatgrass delivered every morning.”
She smiles. “We should be here.”
My throat tightens up, because no matter how hard I try, I seem to mess this up. She could have asked me for every cent in the damn trust fund. I’d have climbed the highest mountain or crawled into the deepest cave to find a cure. Instead she asked for something else—acceptance.
“Why Tanglewood? You never even visited here before this week.”
“Because this city has what you need.”
I scrunch my nose. “The library? I don’t need to oversee the reconstruction personally.”
“Nonsense. This is your project. You should be here for it. And besides, it’s not only the library. Tanglewood has the people you love.”
“Mom, I told you—”
“You do love Avery, don’t you?” she asks, sounding completely innocent. “She’s your best friend, and she’s taking the semester off to work on her thesis. That means she’ll be in town.”
My throat feels tight. “I’m not going to suddenly get married and have a baby.”
My mom has never pushed me to settle down, because she knows the dangers of that more than anyone. And now she’ll never see me walk down the aisle. Never meet any grandchildren. The doctors have given her three to six months to live. Three to six months. How do they even calculate that?
There might have been three more months if she’d been willing to try their grueling treatment—or ironically, the treatment could have killed her faster.
She’s asked me to accept her decision, and mostly I have. There isn’t a protest I can stage that will change her mind. I’ve accepted it, but that doesn’t make it any less painful to bear.
“And Bea,” she murmurs, still pretending to be clueless. We’re staying with Bea and Hugo in their comfy penthouse until we find our own place. “You love her and Hugo. They’re a darling couple.”
I give her a droll look. “Is that the end of the list?”
“For now. I’m sure you’ll learn to love more people once you’ve lived in Tanglewood longer.”
The banister shakes a little when I touch it, and I think we’ll have to get a carpenter in here before it’s safe enough to move in. If my mother wants a grand staircase to descend every morning, then that’s what she’ll get. I can’t give her relief from the pain, but my God, I can give her stairs.
“I messed it up,” I whisper because she needs to understand.
I don’t know how to love someone without the taint of money. I don’t know how to have a relationship with a man where I’m not waiting for him to leave. There’s something dangerous inside me; it grows and grows, eating away at everything good and hopeful and trusting. I don’t know if I ever loved Sutton, if I ever could have loved him, but we didn’t get that far.
And as for Christopher? I’m not sure he’s capable of loving anyone.
Her hand covers mine on the gleaming banister. “Harper.”
The softness of her voice reaches deep inside me. We’ve lived in a hundred different houses. None of them were ever ours. They belonged to one of her husbands. Some of those men were upfront about not wanting a little stepdaughter underfoot. Others pretended to be interested in me. They bought me Barbie doll limos and stuffed dogs with puppies inside them, but eventually they were all the same.
They all kicked us out in the end.
“You don’t have to make my mistakes,” she says, except her eyes are the same hazel gold as my own. It’s like looking in a mirror. She’s somehow more beautiful with age, but it doesn’t make her happy.
“Don’t I?” I didn’t get left behind by one man, but two. She only knows about Sutton, but when I close my eyes there’s two men walking away from me. I have enough distance from what happened six months ago to know it was Christopher who I really wanted. Enough distance to know that Sutton is the closest I’ve ever come to really having love, the kind that is given and received and untarnished by money. I had him, and I let him go.
“Love isn’t supposed to be painful.”
“Then why does it hurt?” Christopher never did anything so mundane, so hopeful as ask me on a date. He never offered himself to me, so why did I keep choosing him?
Her small smile tears my heart in two. “I’m hoping you figure that out the way that