“And Bea,” she murmurs, still pretending to be clueless. We’re staying with Bea and Hugo in their comfy penthouse until we find our own place. “You love her and Hugo. They’re a darling couple.”
I give her a droll look. “Is that the end of the list?”
“For now. I’m sure you’ll learn to love more people once you’ve lived in Tanglewood longer.”
The banister shakes a little when I touch it, and I think we’ll have to get a carpenter in here before it’s safe enough to move in. If my mother wants a grand staircase to descend every morning, then that’s what she’ll get. I can’t give her relief from the pain, but my God, I can give her stairs.
“I messed it up,” I whisper because she needs to understand.
I don’t know how to love someone without the taint of money. I don’t know how to have a relationship with a man where I’m not waiting for him to leave. There’s something dangerous inside me; it grows and grows, eating away at everything good and hopeful and trusting. I don’t know if I ever loved Sutton, if I ever could have loved him, but we didn’t get that far.
And as for Christopher? I’m not sure he’s capable of loving anyone.
Her hand covers mine on the gleaming banister. “Harper.”
The softness of her voice reaches deep inside me. We’ve lived in a hundred different houses. None of them were ever ours. They belonged to one of her husbands. Some of those men were upfront about not wanting a little stepdaughter underfoot. Others pretended to be interested in me. They bought me Barbie doll limos and stuffed dogs with puppies inside them, but eventually they were all the same.
They all kicked us out in the end.
“You don’t have to make my mistakes,” she says, except her eyes are the same hazel gold as my own. It’s like looking in a mirror. She’s somehow more beautiful with age, but it doesn’t make her happy.
“Don’t I?” I didn’t get left behind by one man, but two. She only knows about Sutton, but when I close my eyes there’s two men walking away from me. I have enough distance from what happened six months ago to know it was Christopher who I really wanted. Enough distance to know that Sutton is the closest I’ve ever come to really having love, the kind that is given and received and untarnished by money. I had him, and I let him go.
“Love isn’t supposed to be painful.”
“Then why does it hurt?” Christopher never did anything so mundane, so hopeful as ask me on a date. He never offered himself to me, so why did I keep choosing him?
Her small smile tears my heart in two. “I’m hoping you figure that out the way that I never could. I fell in love with the wrong man, hard enough that there was never any real chance with me and someone else after that. There’s still time for you, Harper.”
“I’m not here to date anyone. And definitely not Sutton.”
She makes a noncommittal sound. “Everything will work out.”
Except my mother has stage four cancer and refuses treatment. The library is broken beyond repair. Everything in my life is falling apart, so how will it work out? I touch a carved wood finial that’s part of the railing. It’s easier to lie when I’m not looking at her. “Okay.”
“Harper. Look at me.”
It takes me five seconds. I count down in my head. I can’t take anything for granted these days—not the ability to stand up straight or hold my head high. Not the ability to look at my mother without incriminating tears burning my eyes.
She gives me a gentle smile. “I talked to a hospice in the city.”
My heart does a strange pitter-patter, like it’s beating enough times for a year but all at once and uneven. Heat and cold courses through me, one after the other. It’s like my body’s electrical system is shorting out. “I thought you didn’t want that.”
“I don’t want to live there, but they have a home-based program.”
“What does that mean?”
“Well, they have nurses who come help me.”
“I can do that.” Even though helping means watching my mom lose her functionality, piece by piece. Two weeks ago I had to help her open a jar of unsweetened organic peanut butter. And then I hid in the pantry and cried for two hours.
“You’re not here to wait on me,” she says with a laugh. “Anyway, I spoke to the care transition counselor on the phone. She’s coming to the house later this week so we can work on the Death Plan. That’s what they call it. Isn’t that funny?”
All the crazy electrical voltage disappears. There’s a flat line where my heartbeat had been. I might as well be made of stone, that’s how numb I feel suddenly. “What?”
“It’s just a name, Harper.”
“I’m not—No—”
“This is something that will help all of us. Especially you.”
“I will buy this house and I will live here and I will do anything you want, but I’m not going to make a Death Plan.” Even the library is a kind of tribute, whether she knows it or not—fixing the unfixable, bringing it back from the brink. I had to accept my mother’s decision to stop treatment, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to embrace her death. I’m not going to plan for it.
There are very few things in my control right now. I make only a single demand in the purchase of the library—that Christopher Bardot meet with me personally. I want him to look me in the eye when he signs these documents. Part of me is afraid of what I’ll find, but I need to know. Did he ever care about me? He manipulated me to save the library, only to hold it hostage for a hefty chunk of my trust fund. The same trust fund he fought so hard to protect. He’s an enigma wrapped in a mystery, and I’m determined to peel away at least a few layers at our meeting.
His acceptance comes back in the form of a hand-couriered, notarized letter. He agrees to the meeting, it says, as long as it happens at a restaurant of his choosing.
It raises the stakes, taking a business meeting and making it happen like a date.
I should be immune to that kind of manipulation, but there’s still hope inside me, buried deep with barely any sunlight. He might hold my hand across the table and tell me that he loves me. That he wants to develop the library together. Those kinds of fantasies are ridiculous. If that’s what he wanted he would have said so from the start instead of making me pay so much.
A limo arrives at seven pm on the dot, its back seat empty. I hide my disappointment from the driver as I step inside. Streetlights flash over my face as we cross Tanglewood.
Koi is the hottest restaurant in Tanglewood with a waiting list six months long for a reservation. Naturally that is where we end up. Is this some kind of power play? I’m not sure why he would need more power in a negotiation where he already set the terms.
He’s taking you here because he secretly loves you, my heart helpfully supplies.
If he loves you why hasn’t he said so? my brain fires back.
Every muscle in my body is strung tight like strings in a violin, being strummed with every step I take. A crowd gathers outside the restaurant, all of them trying to fit into the small bar area that doesn’t require reservations. The air smells like wine and cheese and sex, a decadent combination.