“Keep me posted. I’m worried about her. She’s a pretty great lady, that mom of yours.”
Olivia shifted, uncomfortable as she always was when others spoke about her mother to her. Everyone loved her, with good reason. Juliet was warm, gracious, kind to just about everyone in their beachside community of Cape Sanctuary.
Which made Olivia’s own awkward, tangled relationship with her mother even harder to comprehend.
“Will you be able to come home for a few days?”
Home. How could she go home when she couldn’t even walk into the coffee shop across the street?
“I don’t know. I’ll have to see what’s going on there.”
How could she possibly travel all the way to Northern California? A complicated mix of emotions seemed to lodge like a tangled ball of yarn in her chest whenever she thought about her hometown, which she loved and hated in equal measures.
The town held so much guilt and pain and sorrow. Her father was buried there and so was her sister. Each room in Sea Glass Cottage stirred like the swirl of dust motes with memories of happier times.
Olivia hadn’t been back in more than a year. She kept meaning to make a trip but something else always seemed to come up. She usually went for the holidays at least, but the previous year she’d backed out of even that after work obligations kept her in Seattle until Christmas Eve and a storm had made last-minute travel difficult. She had spent the holiday with friends instead of with her mother and Caitlin and had felt guilty that she had enjoyed it much more than the previous few when she had gone home.
She couldn’t avoid it now, though. A trip back to Cape Sanctuary was long overdue, especially if her mother needed her.
“Thanks again for letting me know.”
“I’m so glad I called. The minute you find out anything about Juliet, let me know.”
“I will. Thanks.”
After she ended the call with Melody, Olivia immediately called her mother’s cell. When there was no answer there, she dialed Caitlin’s phone and was sent straight to voice mail, almost as if her niece was blocking her.
She glared at the phone in frustration.
Left with few other options, she finally dialed the hospital in Cape Sanctuary. To her relief, after she asked whether her mother was a patient there, she was connected almost instantly to a room.
“Hello?”
Her mother did not sound like herself. Usually Juliet’s voice was firm, confident. She wasn’t exactly brusque, merely self-assured and determined to waste as little time as possible.
Today, Juliet’s voice was small, hesitant, almost... Frightened.
With her own emotions frayed from the week she’d had, Olivia was aware of a subtle thread connecting them for once, as unexpected as it was unusual.
She was frightened, too.
“Mom. What’s going on? Is it true you were in an accident?”
“How did you find out?” Juliet asked.
Not from you or from Caitlin, she wanted to answer tartly. The two people who should have told her hadn’t bothered to pick up the phone, had they?
Otis came running over with his favorite toy and sat at her feet, happily chewing.
“Melody called me, saying she’d heard bits and pieces and knew you had been injured. Apparently you had a fall. Are you okay? What happened?”
“It’s the stupidest thing. I’m so embarrassed.”
“I don’t think the word embarrassed needs to enter the conversation here. You’re hurt. You had an accident. You didn’t break a bottle of pickles at the grocery store. Did you fall off the roof?”
Juliet released a breath. “I was up on a ladder, trying to hang some baskets I had just potted to the hooks in one of the greenhouses, and...something went wrong.”
Olivia frowned at that momentary hesitation. “Something?”
“The ladder buckled or it wasn’t set up right in the first place. I don’t know exactly. To be honest, everything’s a bit of a blur. Of course, that might be the pain medicine talking.”
“What were you doing up on a ladder? You’re the boss. Don’t you have people to do that?”
“We’re shorthanded. Don’t get me started.” Juliet’s voice sounded somewhat stronger. Talking about the garden center she loved must have helped take her mind off the pain and fear.
“I spent three years training Sharon Mortimer to be the assistant manager under me and she decides two weeks ago to take a job running the nursery at a box store in Redding. Can you believe it? Where’s the loyalty?”
She didn’t want to deal with the garden center’s personnel issues right now, when her mother was lying in a hospital bed. “What are the doctors saying?”
“You know doctors. They only want to give you bad news.”
“What did they say?”
Juliet sighed. “Apparently I have a concussion. And I broke two ribs and also my right hip. That’s the side I landed on. They were afraid my wrist on that side was broken as well where I tried to brace my landing, but it seems to be only sprained.”
How far had she fallen? Good heavens. It sounded horrible. “Oh, Mom.”
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” Juliet assured her. “I was only on the ground for a few minutes before one of my customers found me and called paramedics. And they were there right away. So handsome.”
Juliet seemed to be drifting away again.
“What are the doctors saying about your recovery? Will you need surgery? A cast?” Olivia pressed again. She had no idea how a broken hip was treated.
“Dr. Adeno, that nice new orthopedic doctor, was just here and she wants to do surgery tomorrow. I still haven’t decided if I want to go through with it.”
Olivia rolled her eyes. “It’s not like Botox, Mom. It’s not about whether you feel like it or not. If you need orthopedic surgery, you don’t have many options. Not if you want to walk again.”
“She says I’ll be in the hospital three to five days and need four to six weeks of recovery. I can’t be away from the garden center that long! The whole place will fall apart, especially without Sharon.”
Everything always came back to the garden center. Why was she so surprised?
After Steve Harper’s tragic death, her mother had stepped up to run the business that supported her family and had surprised everyone—probably most especially Juliet herself—by being great at it.
Olivia had tried not to resent her mother’s long hours as she had immersed herself in learning the business.