A knock sounded on the bathroom door.
Genevieve stuck her head around the shower curtain’s edge. “Yes?”
“I brought you breakfast in bed, sweetie,” Mom called.
“I’ll be right out.” She turned off the water and toweled dry.
Before the earthquake, her relationship with Mom had been simpler. Nowadays? Complex.
Their interactions tended to follow a well-worn path. Mom smothered her, which frustrated Genevieve, which led to guilt, which eventually concluded in irritability, despite the fact that Genevieve knew she didn’t have the right to feel irritated.
She and Natasha had been blessed with a mom who loved them and fed them and cared for them and picked them up from school and bought them new clothes and said prayers with them and cheered for them at every event and served on the PTA and sent them to private Christian school.
Genevieve cinched the belt of her pink robe around her waist and exited the humid bathroom for the cooler air-conditioned bedroom.
“I was hoping to catch you before you got up.” Mom held a breakfast tray.
“No worries. I can slip back under the covers just as quickly. See? Ready.”
Caroline settled the tray over Genevieve’s legs as if Genevieve were the recent victim of a spinal cord injury. “I made your favorite. French toast with cinnamon-spiced apples and pecans.”
“Amazing.”
“Butter. Maple syrup.”
“Really amazing!” She’d have to eat the majority of this or she’d hurt her mom’s feelings. “Thanks so much.” A plate inscribed with You Are Special Today held the French toast. A cloth napkin cushioned sterling silverware.
Caroline held out a hand. Genevieve proffered her own so her mom could give it a heartfelt squeeze.
“Isn’t this a moment to treasure?” Mom asked.
“Yep!” Squeeze. Meaningful eye contact. Squeeze. Tender smile. Squeeze. Honestly, Genevieve didn’t need any more mother-daughter moments to treasure. What she dearly wanted were plain old ordinary moments. The pressure to make every moment extraordinary was sapping her life force.
“Here you are.” Mom shook out Genevieve’s cloth napkin, then stretched toward her as if to tuck it into her robe.
“Got it.” Genevieve intercepted the napkin and laid it across her lap. She was thirty years old. She didn’t require her mom to tuck napkins beneath her chin. And just like that, with absolute clarity, she saw that she could not stay here while detoxing. What had she been thinking? Of course she couldn’t. Mom made her want to swallow pills like Kool-Aid.
Back to Nashville, then. Which was such a lonely prospect that she wanted to cry—
A third option slipped into her mind in the form of an image. A white cottage near a pond. Hills rippling with leaves.
If Genevieve went through withdrawal inside Sam’s cottage, she could continue to hide her secret from her family. Yet she wouldn’t be entirely, horribly alone. She’d have someone nearby who knew the truth about the Oxy but wouldn’t smother her.
Yes . . . But was she prepared for the “someone nearby” to be Sam Turner? After the introduction they’d had, it would be more than a little mortifying to see him again. Was she willing to endure mortification in order to gain access to his cottage?
The sweetness of French toast filled her mouth as she chewed.
She would make Sam’s cottage very, very cute. Once she finished with it, the cottage would be worth a little mortification.
Also—other than riffling through her purse—Sam hadn’t been rude. He’d seemed decent. He’d seemed like the type of person who’d treat her like a grown-up and give her space but who’d also respond if, in the case of an emergency, she called him. He wouldn’t let her shrivel up and die.
At least she didn’t think he’d let her shrivel up and die. Would he?
No doubt, Sam wouldn’t consider her to be an ideal renter after their previous interaction.
But Genevieve could be persuasive.
She returned her focus to her mom, who had launched into a verbal list of all the treasured moments she had planned for the two of them today. “After lunch with Belle and Margaret, we can head to Gloria’s, and you can get your roots done.”
“I have dark roots on purpose, Mom. I like it like this.”
Mom’s brows elevated. “It’s so pretty, sweetie. Very flattering. But I . . . are you sure?”
“Very sure.”
“I suppose I can call and cancel the appointment I made for you and hope Gloria hasn’t turned anyone else away. Maybe I’ll just pay her because I hate to cancel. . . .”
“Mom, have you met Sam Turner? He lives out at Sugar Maple Farm.”
She appeared perplexed by the swift change in topic. “I’ve chatted with him a few times. He’s the Australian man who owns Sugar Maple Kitchen.”
Ah. So Sam was Australian, not British as she’d first guessed. “I’m not familiar with Sugar Maple Kitchen.”
“It’s a breakfast restaurant downtown.”
Genevieve moved the tray to the middle of the bed and crossed her legs. “He mentioned to me that he has a cottage on his property.”
“Hmm? When did he mention this?”
“Yesterday when I stopped to get gas near his farm.” More lies. Her conscience flinched. “I think I’m going to rent the cottage from him during my stay here in Misty River.”
“Why would you want to stay on a farm when you can stay here?”
“Because I have a tremendous amount of work to do, and I feel like I’m ignoring you and Dad when I close myself into my room in order to get everything done that I need to get done.”
“No, no, it’s fine.”
“I’m going to talk to Sam about renting the cottage.”
“Your father and I completely understand that you’re busy, sweetie. You’re always very, very busy.” Chiding crept into her voice. “But you’re working for the Kingdom, and so when you’re here, we don’t take it personally. Even though you’re not here often.”
“I love and appreciate the fact that I’m always welcome here. You and Dad and Natasha and this house are precious to me.” She looked Mom straight in the face. The situation she’d gotten herself into was so serious that she simply could not afford to cave to mom guilt. “Even so, I’m going to stay in Sam’s cottage this time around.”
Natasha
The building is wailing and shaking. It’s going to come down around us. On us.
I’m going to die. My sister’s going to die.
“Yell so I know where you are,” a boy—Luke—shouts.
“H—” My mouth has gone dry and no sound will come out. I swallow and try again. “Here!”
Hands roughly yank me forward into a dim room. Dust is falling like rain. I meet Luke’s eyes and dig my fingers into his arm. “My sister!”
Genevieve and I were close when we were little, but I’m in eighth grade and Gen’s in sixth, and she’s been annoying me the last few years by borrowing my stuff and coming into my room and talking too much. I haven’t been nice to her lately, and now I can’t stand that thought. Because we’re both going to die.