sadness with first booze and then pot and then harder drugs.
The memory hurt, especially knowing she would never be able to heal that rift with her sister that had grown between them before Nat died.
Was she subconsciously trying to do that through Caitlin? Were her efforts to make everything right between her and her niece another way to keep a piece of her sister close?
She was way too tired to figure this out tonight.
“Is Mimi sleeping?” Caitlin asked stiffly. “I told her I would let her know how youth group went, but I don’t want to bug her if she’s already down for the night.”
“I think so. Her light has been out for a few hours. She went for a drive today with Jake’s dad. I think it kind of wore her out.”
She decided to try one more time to find common ground with Caitlin, or at least a topic they could discuss without sniping at each other.
“While we’re talking about people who may or may not be a thing, do you think there’s any chance Juliet and Henry might be...involved?”
Caitlin stared at her as if she had just pulled a chipmunk out of her ear. “Involved how?”
“Are they dating?”
“Ew! No!”
“Why does that warrant an ew? Juliet is not exactly an old lady. She’s only in her fifties, which is the new thirty these days.”
“Hate to break it to you, but thirty is old, too.”
Olivia, who would be thirty in only a few months, decided not to be offended. She did feel old sometimes, as if life were passing her by.
“Why do you care whether people are seeing each other? Maybe you need to focus on your own love life and stop worrying about everyone else.”
“I don’t have a love life. Why else would I be so interested?” Sadly, there was more truth to that than she wanted to admit. That kiss she had shared with Cooper, the one she couldn’t get out of her head, was the most excitement she’d had in months. Much longer, actually, which was one of the main reasons she had broken off her engagement to Grant.
“Mimi and Henry are not dating. I’m sure of it. Lilianne, that’s Jake’s mom and Henry’s wife, was one of Mimi’s best friends.”
Olivia did not see that Lilianne had anything to do with the situation, considering the other woman had been gone for years, but since Caitlin was talking to her without yelling, she decided not to argue with her.
“I knew her. Henry’s wife, I mean. I always liked her.”
A massage therapist, Lilianne had been one of those New Age, bean sprout types who would have fit in well in Seattle, she remembered. She had always been kind to Olivia when she would babysit for Jake.
“She was super nice. Everyone was really sad when she died. Jake still misses her a lot, though he doesn’t talk about it much.”
“It’s tough to lose a parent at his age,” she said. “I still miss my dad, your grandpa Steve, all the time and he died right before my thirteenth birthday.”
“I don’t miss my mom,” Caitlin said, her voice hardening. “I barely even remember her.”
Before Olivia could confess she missed Natalie as much as she missed Steve, Caitlin stood up abruptly. “I’m going to bed,” she said, tossing the yogurt container in the bin.
She turned to go, but as she did, her backpack fell on the floor and the contents spilled out.
Caitlin swore an oath that Olivia had a feeling she would never have said if Juliet were there, then bent down to pick them up. Olivia knelt to help. They appeared to be schoolbooks and folders, except for one pink-covered book with a gold spine.
“What’s this?”
“Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”
But it was too late. Olivia recognized it. Every year for Christmas, Juliet would give both her and Natalie identical new journals for the year. She remembered this one from the year her father died, when she had poured out all her sadness and grief, her feelings of being abandoned by Juliet, too.
“Is this my journal?”
“It’s my mom’s,” Caitlin said, snatching it away from her.
“Where did you get it? Did my mom give it to you?”
Caitlin said nothing, which made Olivia suspect the girl had found it on her own. She wasn’t sure Juliet would have wanted Caitlin reading her mother’s thoughts and emotions around that time. Natalie had been wild before Steve’s death, but she seemed to have lost all restraint afterward, staying out for days at a time and coming home