She had never been gifted with the green thumb of her father, or her older sister. Steve and Natalie had bonded over their time in the garden. Nat had loved playing in the dirt while Olivia much preferred digging into a good book.
“This couldn’t have happened at a worse time.” Juliet suddenly sounded close to tears.
“Spring growing season.”
“Right. Our busiest season of the year. And that traitor Sharon deserts us for stock options and a better 401(k). What am I going to do? I can’t have surgery tomorrow.”
Again, her mother sounded frightened and Olivia had no idea how to handle it. Juliet was one of the most together people she’d ever known. Hearing this vulnerability in her voice disturbed her almost more than the accident itself.
“I’m sorry,” she said gently, not knowing what else she could say.
“I wish you were here.”
The small, frail-sounding words came out of nowhere, almost as if Juliet didn’t really know she had uttered them.
Olivia stared into space while she felt something odd and sharp tug at her chest.
Her mother needed her. For once, Juliet wasn’t the invincible almost-fifty-three-year-old widow running a successful business and raising her teenage granddaughter on her own. She was an injured woman who needed help and didn’t know how to ask for it.
In the end, that was all that mattered. Olivia reached for a piece of paper, already mentally going through the list of things she would have to do in order to take extended emergency family leave from her job, close up her apartment and head out of town.
“I’ll come down for a few days,” she said instantly, without giving herself time to panic. “I’ll be there as soon as I can make the arrangements.”
“Oh. Oh no,” Juliet said quickly, as if coming to her senses and realizing what she had said. “I know how busy you are. Anyway, what will Grant say?”
Grant was her ex-fiancé. Though he was an executive at her job, he wasn’t directly over her department and had nothing to say that mattered. At least he hadn’t in the six months since they broke up. “Don’t worry about me, Mom. This is an emergency. I can take some time.”
“Oh. I hate to be a bother. I feel so stupid.”
“You’re not a bother and you’re not stupid.”
What kind of weird universe had she slipped into where she was the one giving her mother counsel? That wasn’t the natural order of things. Usually Juliet didn’t need Olivia or anybody. After Olivia’s father died, her mother had tried very hard to prove that to the world.
“I’ll get down there soon as I can.”
“I’ll be fine, honey. I promise,” Juliet continued to protest. “Don’t come. Do you hear me?”
Before Olivia could answer, Juliet switched gears. “Oh. I need to go,” she said. “Caitlin just came in.”
Of course her mom needed to go if Olivia’s fifteen-year-old niece was there. She almost insisted her mother hand the phone to Caitlin so Olivia could yell at her for not calling her the instant she found out about Juliet’s accident, but she had a feeling Juliet would refuse, ever protective over the daughter of the child she couldn’t save.
“All right. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Don’t come down, honey.” Her mother suddenly sounded far more like herself, her voice brisk and in control. “I mean it. We’ll be fine. I may not be able to get around for a few weeks, but I can supervise operations at the garden center just fine from a wheelchair. I’ll call you later in the week. Bye. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” she started to say, but by then, her mother had already hung up the phone.
Olivia sat for a moment, her dog happily chewing his toy at her feet and full-on rain splattering the window now.
She was half tempted to listen to her mother and stay right here in Seattle, especially after Juliet had just bluntly told her not to come. But then she thought of Juliet’s frightened voice and knew she couldn’t stand by. For once, her mother needed her. If that meant Olivia had to bury her own anxieties and juggle work and clients to make it happen, she could do it.
2
JULIET
Juliet Harper ended the call to her daughter, aware even through her fuzzy, painkiller-addled brain of the usual funny catch in her chest that always showed up when she talked to Olivia.
Their relationship seemed so...wrong. She always ended up saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing.
Every time she spoke with Olivia, she had the best of intentions, determined this would be her chance to heal whatever was broken in her interactions with her daughter.
Instead, she would end up bumbling her way through a conversation, never saying what was really on her mind or expressing how much she loved and admired Olivia for all she had overcome.
She knew what was at the heart of it. She had failed one daughter so miserably and was desperately afraid she would screw up with the other one. The great and terrible irony in the whole situation was that her very fear was the main thing in the way of forging a warm and loving mother-daughter relationship with Olivia. The one she yearned for with all her heart.
“Who was that?” Caitlin took a sip from the soda she had brought up from the hospital cafeteria after Juliet had made her granddaughter go down and find something to eat.
Why couldn’t her interactions with Olivia be as easy as those with Caitlin?
“Your aunt Olivia. I asked you to call her. Why didn’t you?”
“I sent her a message,” Caitlin said, her tone defensive. “Maybe she missed it.”
“I told you to call her, not message,” she said. Caitlin always did things her own way and had since she was a baby. When other children would stack two or three blocks together, Caitlin would use them like percussion instruments. Instead of playing with dolls, she had dressed up the wriggling cats and tried to have tea parties with them.
She shifted in the hospital bed in a futile effort to find a more comfortable position.
Everything hurt. Who knew that one stupid decision, to climb a ladder without someone there to hold it for her, as she always insisted for her workers, could have such devastating consequences?
She should have known. She wasn’t stupid, though nobody would know that by the traumatic events of her day.
The pain meds were wearing off. Instead of asking for more or surrendering to her discomfort, Juliet forced herself to focus on her granddaughter.
She looked so much like her mother, with Natalie’s blond hair, bold eyebrows, stunning hazel eyes. Where Natalie had favored layers and big curls, like the style of the day when she was a teenager, Caitlin wore her hair short in an almost elfin cut. She dressed in her own unique style.