“Was she always that way, or did Sebastian make her crazy?” Daisy asked.
Her sisters looked appalled.
“How could you even suggest such a thing?” Jo asked.
“I don’t mean he did it on purpose, but you have to admit it was plain to see she was always more invested than he was,” Daisy said. “Can you blame her for going bananas when he’d inevitably break up with her? Or when Presley came for the summer?”
Jo laid a look on Daisy. “Have you forgotten that I’m in her grade? Or that she bullied me into therapy in elementary school?”
“Of course not,” Daisy answered. “I’m not saying she’s an angel, but you can’t say Sebastian didn’t make her worse. Plus, she was just a kid. She’s a nurse now. Surely she’s compassionate.”
“Or she likes the ideas of sticking people with needles,” Jo said under her breath.
Daisy nibbled on her lip. “Anyway, I get it. She was familiar to him, safe. And when you’re grieving, it’s hard to know if what you feel is real. There’s just so much feeling, figuring out what’s what isn’t so easy.”
The room quieted for a second at the remembrance of Daisy’s high school boyfriend who died in a car accident their senior year. Dottie wore a similar look of sadness, having lost my uncle before Jo could walk.
“Well,” Poppy said with a little extra cheer, “it’s nothing to worry about. The two of them were probably over before they got started. It’s not on you, and I’m sure she won’t get herself involved.”
We all shared a look but let it go.
Mom shifted to get off her stool, and I hopped down fast so I could help her.
“Thanks, honey. Will you walk me back to the house?”
Dottie frowned. “You okay, Birdie?”
“Oh, I’m fine—just a little tired is all,” she said with an encouraging smile.
“Can I leave Cilla here?” I asked as I took Mom’s arm.
“Of course,” Dottie answered, smiling down at Priscilla. “I can’t lose my helper or I’ll never finish.”
Priscilla straightened up proudly. “Yeah, Mama. I’m helping.”
“Keep up the good work, kiddo,” I said, helping Mom with her oxy-go before steering her toward the door. “Be right back.”
We headed outside, the heat instantly stifling. Cicadas rattled long, slow hisses in rounds as we headed for our house on the back of the property.
The ranch house where my cousins lived had been built as a small cabin in the eighteen thirties by our homesteading German ancestors, expanded in the early nineteen hundreds, and remodeled completely in the fifties, keeping as much of the original structure as possible. It’d grown out, not up, over the decades, and at this stage was a five-thousand-square-foot compound with a courtyard full of ancient trees in the middle and breezeways along the inside.
The house in back where we were staying was once for part of the family—nobody used to leave, just stayed on and worked the farm generation after generation. Dottie had redone it for us when we came down for the summers—the little two-bedroom, one bath cottage had all the charm and memories I could stand.
It was perfect. And if it hadn’t been for Dottie, I didn’t know where we’d have gone when we lost the house in Maravillo.
My dad left us before my tenth birthday, and Mom had always struggled to keep up with the mortgage on a single income. But just after Priscilla was born, she caught a bout of pneumonia that almost killed her, and they discovered her COPD. This was what finally convinced her to quit smoking, but the damage had been done—the state of her lungs had deteriorated to the point that she would need an oxygen machine for the rest of her days.
After that, she wasn’t able to work. So I picked up more shifts at the diner in Maravillo and sold my candles and lotions and soaps on the side, hoping one day that income would overshadow what I made waiting tables. But even with Mom’s disability checks, we couldn’t make enough to cover the mortgage and the taxes, which were over a thousand dollars a month.
When the bank foreclosed on the house, Dottie didn’t even hesitate to offer to take us in.
And thank goodness. In that, at least, the stars had finally aligned, bringing me back to Lindenbach, and to Sebastian.
“So you’re seeing him tonight?” Mom asked. I couldn’t tell from her tone how she felt about it.
“Yup.”
A pause. “You okay?”
“If I said yes, would you believe me?”
“Not a chance.”
“I’ve imagined it a million times in a trillion variations. How do you even say something like this? Just blurt it out? Is there a way to break it gently?”
“The word break implies probably not. The best you’ve got is probably a good news/bad news setup.”
“Is Priscilla the good news or the bad news?”
“Good news. The bad news is that you didn’t tell him.”
“Because I couldn’t find him.”
“You don’t have to defend yourself to me, honey. I’m just saying it’s not going to be easy.”
“Neither has being a single mom.”
“No, I understand that well enough. It’s our curse. Our men either die young or leave. So just make sure he’s healthy and isn’t going anywhere.”
“Sebastian? Stay still? All he’s ever done is try to get out of this town. And anyway, I don’t think it’s going to work out in the forever relationship sort of way.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t tell him about Cilla. Because he never wanted kids. Because right now, in this moment, he’s not a dad. In a few hours, he will be. All because of me. And that’s on top of his divorce. The timing sucks. It’s always sucked.”
“That’s the spirit,” she deadpanned.
“It’s too complicated to have any illusions about what will come of us. My current concern is that he doesn’t hate me when he finds out.”
“Oh, I don’t think he could ever hate you. It’s not in his nature.”
“Yeah, well, I’m about to test that theory.”
We were quiet for a moment as we approached the house. I helped her up the front steps, my thoughts a whirl.
“After all this time,” she said. “He’ll finally know tonight, and you can go to sleep with a clean conscience.”
“I don’t know about clean.”
She nudged me and walked through the door I held open. “Maybe he’ll be happy. Maybe it’ll all work out. And if it doesn’t, well … you’ve been doing it this long alone.”
“I really am a kick ass mom, aren’t I?”
“Judging by the small fortune in the swear jar, I’d beg to differ.”
When I laughed, she turned to face me, her eyes and smile soft.
“You know how to be alone.”
“I’ve always had you, Mama. I’ve never been alone.”
Her eyes were a mirror of mine, her dark hair streaked with gray. But those eyes knew what it meant to be alone more than I ever would.
“Neither have I, because I’ve always had you. But I’m a poor substitute for Sebastian. Maybe you won’t have to do it alone anymore.”