by Rachel Hauck
From inside the SUV, one of the girls screamed while the other called, “Mama!”
Daisy angled down to see through the open window. “Betsy, sugar, I told you not to open your juice lid.” Daisy smiled at Corina. “She spilled it all over herself, and she hates being wet. She’ll cry all the way home.”
“Go, you have better things to do than stand here with me.”
“I don’t know about better, but . . .” With a smile, Daisy pulled Corina into a hug. And for a fleeting second, Corina cradled her cheek on her friend’s shoulder and left a piece of her burden there.
Daisy gave her signature horn toot as she crept down the drive. Corina waved, her bags at her feet, the reality of Daisy’s dream the first kiss on her heart that God heard her prayers.
Did it mean she’d reconcile with Stephen? She had no idea, but for now she had an ounce more courage, and that was worth something.
Ida Mae, Mama’s maid, with her tan, fleshy arms pumping, opened the door, a smile on her broad face. “Land sakes alive, get in here, girl.” She snagged Corina in a bosomy, vanilla-cinnamon hug. “Why didn’t you call ahead? I’d have made dumplings.”
“I’m only here for a few hours.” Corina peered into the aging woman’s snappy brown eyes. “How about when I get back? Dumplings and apple pie.”
The maid’s eyes misted. “I’ve been missing you.” She wiped her tears with the edge of her apron. “Tell me, how’s Florida? It’s just not the same since you’ve been gone.” She paused for a silent beat. And Carlos.
“Florida is fine.” Corina looped her arm around her old friend. “I’m here for my passport and the Diamatia. I’m flying out of Atlanta to Brighton tonight.”
“T–the Diamatia, you say?” Ida Mae’s eyes enlarged and she angled away from Corina. “W–well, ain’t that nice? I–I could’ve sent it down to you.”
“Just found out I needed it on Monday and it’s been crazy . . . You okay, Ida Mae?”
The woman nodded, inhaling deeply. “What you be needing the dress for?”
“I’m covering a movie premier in Cathedral City Monday night.” And winning back my husband.
Ida Mae sighed, folding her hands over her heart. “I sure do miss our summers on Brighton’s shores.”
The maid had been a part of the Del Rey family since Daddy and Mama were newlyweds. Never married, she traveled with them to their homes in Hawaii, Colorado, and Vermont, and the every-other summers in Brighton. She was family. Mama’s best friend, if her mother was honest.
More than the aristocratic society ladies with whom she luncheoned and ran charities. Because in Mama’s darkest hour, Ida Mae had been her comfort. Her friends were nowhere to be found. Grief manhandled some folks.
“I miss Brighton too.” Truth? She did. “And oh, Ida Mae, you’ll like this. I’m working on an interview with Clive Boston.”
Ida Mae paused in the kitchen doorway and feigned a swoon, pressing the back of her hand to her forehead. “Clive Boston is one of my favorites. I met him at that premier of your daddy’s.” Daddy’s hobby of Hollywood films benefited them all. “What about him for a beau?” Ida Mae wiggled her eyebrows, taking a tall pitcher of golden brown tea from the refrigerator.
“Clive?” Corina curled her lip. “He’s not my type.” Dark-haired, rugby-playing princes were more her speed. “And he’s like, forty-five.”
“Oh I see, a Methuselah, is he? I’ll take forty-five. Shoot, darling, I’ll take fifty-five.” Ida Mae snorted a laugh as she poured Corina a glass of tea and filled bowls with chips and salsa. “Eat up. You’re looking too skinny.”
“I don’t have you to cook for me.” Corina dipped the chips in Ida Mae’s homemade salsa and sighed. Simply heaven.
“Got cookies in the jar too.” The maid set a blue-and-gold ceramic cookie jar on the counter.
Corina lifted the lid, a surprise splash of tears in her eyes. Since she’d been old enough to shove the kitchen stool across the tile floor, she’d found the ceramic blue-and-gold jar full of cookies. But it was a tradition that got lost amid the grieving and coping.
“I decided it was time,” Ida Mae said.
“Does Mama know?” Cookie baking was one of the family traditions she’d discouraged after the funeral.
“She does, but I’ve never seen her eat one. I eat them or carry them over to my family dinners on Sunday. But once, I’m not sure, I thought I heard the lid clanking one afternoon when I was downstairs tending laundry.”
“Wow.” Maybe there was hope for Horatia Del Rey after all.
Ida Mae went to the library door. “Horatia, darling, someone’s here to see you.” The maid sounded more like a kind mother than a lifelong servant.
“Yes, I know,” Mama said, her voice coming from deep inside the light and shadowed library. “I saw you outside talking to Daisy. Corina, what brings you here?”
She saw her? And didn’t come to the door? When Corina and Carlos came home for Christmas their first year of college, Mama had the high school band waiting for them in the front yard.
“Hey, Mama.” Corina washed down her last bite of chips with a sweet swig of tea and moved into the library. The white brick fireplace in the center of the room was where she learned her letters. Where she curled up on winter nights and read her first book, Little House in the Big Woods. “I’m leaving for Brighton tomorrow. I came to get a few things.”
“I see.” Mama looked beautiful, as always, impeccably dressed in her silk blouse, linen skirt, and string of pearls resting at the base of her throat. Any other time she might think Mama was on her way to a luncheon or returning from a charity meeting.
But her gaunt cheeks accented by the dark circles under her eyes told a different story.
“How’s Daddy?”
“Off to Birmingham. Overseeing the construction of a new golf course.”
“Good for him.” As chairman of the Del Rey family fortune, Daddy mostly managed investments and sat on the board of a dozen companies. But when she and Carlos were teens, he developed a passion for designing and building golf courses.
“There’s another one after this one.” Mama sighed, smoothed her skirt, and sat in the Queen Anne-Marie chair she’d inherited from Corina’s great-great-grandmother Thurman. “What’s in Brighton?”
“A movie premier. Gigi received an invitation from the palace and decided to send me in her place.” Corina inched farther into the room, as if Mama’s question gave her permission to do so. Leaning against the couch, she ran her hands over the wool-and-silk upholstery. “Clive Boston is the star, and I’m supposed to interview him. But he’s notorious for not showing up.”
“Oh? Give Clive my regards.”
“Mama, say, why don’t you come?” On the spot. Spur of the moment. It felt like a good idea. She’d have to figure out how to explain Stephen, but details, details. “I’m staying at The Wellington.”
Mama laughed. “Goodness no. What would I do in Brighton?”
“What you used to do in Brighton. Shop. Go down to the shore. Walk the art festival. Have tea with Lady Hutton. Take in a rugby match.” Be with me, your daughter.
Mama picked up her book. “I don’t need to shop. I’ve got more clothes than I can possibly wear. I’ve no need for art and I’ve not talked to Lady Hutton in . . .” Her voice faded. “I’m fine right here.”
“Don’t you want to—”
“Corina,” Mama said with a sharp sigh and warning glance. Don’t push.
“I’m going up to my room. I need my passport and the Diamatia. I want to wear it to the premier.”
Mama swept imaginary lint from her skirt. “Ida Mae, Corina came for her passport.”
The faithful maid came to the library door, her expression dark. “Horatia, you might as well tell her.”
“Tell me what?” Corina said. “Mama?”
Mama pursed her lips, exchanging glances with Ida Mae. “I made over your room.”
“You what?”
“I needed a pro
ject, so I turned your room into a quiet room.”
“A quiet room? This whole place is a morgue.” Corina’s voice carried, and her words were sharper than she’d intended. “How can you possibly want quiet?”
Mama didn’t respond but sat in her chair, staring out the window toward the garden.
Corina knelt next to her. “Mama, I’m sorry, but why my room? We have a ton of spare rooms to make over.”
“Yours was across from Carlos’s.” What little light lived in Mama’s eyes shone when she said his name. “I don’t want to argue with you. Ida Mae can take you to your things.”
“Mama.” Corina squeezed Mama’s thin arm, fearing she was losing more of her every day. “For the life of me, I—”
“You know what your problem is, Corina?” Mama said, chin resting in her fingers, her gaze cold and vacant. “You don’t know when to give up. When to realize life has you beat.”
“I’m thirty, Mama. You had Carlos and me by my age. I can’t believe that life defeated me at twenty-five. What would I do with myself otherwise?” She’d hung around, trying to draw Mama out, get her to live again. “Mama, don’t give up. You have so much to live for yet.”
“I lost my son, Corina. And for what? A war that our government made sure we could never win. Killed in a firefight? What does that even mean?” Shaking, Mama pressed her hand to her forehead. It was as if the news of Carlos’s death had just arrived. “My baby . . .”
“You’re not alone, Mama. I lost my brother, my twin.” Corina ached to draw Mama into a hug, but she would only shrug her off.
“But yet, look at you, moving to Florida, attending movie premiers.”
“I couldn’t sit around here another day, Mama. Five years, just existing and not living. You know darn well Carlos would hate it.”
“We don’t know what he would think or want, do we? Because he’s not here.” Mama shot to her feet and paced to the window, the southern light accenting her dark hair and narrow frame so she appeared angelic. “By the way, the Diamatia is not here.”
“Not here?” Something in Mama’s tone carved a dark pit in Corina’s belly. “Where is it then?”
“I donated it,” Mama said, brushing her hand up and down her arm as if she were chilled.
“You donated it?” A ticklish heat flashed over Corina and flared her temper. She thudded toward Mama, taking hold of her arm. “To whom? When? And might I ask, why?”
“We no longer had need of it.”
“We? No longer . . . had need of . . . it? Who’s we, Mama? It was my gown.” Anger fueled Corina’s tears, but they were too hot, too thick to slip down her cheeks.
“Which I purchased for you.” Mama turned from the window, hands on her hips. “By hunting down the most elusive, exclusive designer in the world.”
“So you have the right to give it away? You moved heaven and earth to convince Luciano to design a gown for me. How did you suddenly feel the need to give it away?”
“Livy Rothschild was auctioning items for charity at Christie’s and she wondered if I had any items to sell.”
“Livy Rothschild? She just suddenly called up and said, ‘Hello, Horatia, got stuff to sell? How about that Diamatia?’ ”
“Don’t be smart. She called to see how I fared. She’s been one of my true friends through this ordeal.”
Corina fisted her hands, pressing them over her eyes. Livy was a fair-weather friend like the rest of them. Grief made her uncomfortable and she avoided it like a ten-dollar skirt from Walmart. Corina could remember only a handful of short calls from the aristocratic Bostonian after the funeral.
“What about me, Mama? Huh? I stayed here with you. Gave up my career, my social life. Most of my friends are married, starting families. But I stayed with you and Daddy.” Corina demanded an answer with her posture and tone. “So why would you even think to give away my dress?”
“Do not badger me. It’s done.”
Corina stepped back. “Has it sold? ’Cause I’ll get it from Livy.”
“Yes, it sold. The money went to help foster girls who were too old to stay in the system but had no place to go.”
“Mama, that’s fantastic, but why not just write them a check?” The black hole in her middle widened, and Corina struggled not to fall in. “Don’t sell my stuff.” It was as if little by little, Mama was removing all signs of Corina. “We were going to give that dress to my daughter for her debut, remember? And if I didn’t have a daughter, we’d give it to Carlos’s. Then one day, she’d hand it down to her daughter.”
“Carlos is not going to have a daughter now, is he? Nor a son.” Mama faced Corina, arms folded, back straight. “And are you planning on marrying anytime soon?”
Steam. Could Mama see the steam rising from Corina?
“I thought not,” Mama said. “So I gave up the gown. It was the right thing to do.”
“Mama.” Corina took her mother by the arms, her legs trembling, her heart exploding. “I. Am. Not. Dead. Carlos is gone and it hurts every day. But I’m still here. I will get married, I’ll give you and Daddy grandbabies to spoil. We’ll make new memories and—”
“I don’t want new memories.” Mama softened, and the tears flowed. “I want the old ones. The ones where my son was alive.” She waved off any response, turning away. “Just get what you want from your things. There are other gowns.” Mama turned to Ida Mae, her brown eyes soaked with tears. “Can you get Corina’s passport from the safe? And show her where you put her gowns.”
“Come on with me, baby.” Sympathy laced Ida Mae’s soft, low tone.
Corina could do nothing but obey. In silence. At the top of the stairs, Ida Mae paused. “She thinks I put your gowns in the garnet room. But I left them in your old closet. Didn’t feel it was right to move them.”
Corina kissed the old maid’s cheek. “Thank you.” At her bedroom door she asked, “Doesn’t she even come in here?”
“She does.”
“In a house of eighteen rooms, she makes over mine?”
“Go on in. You’ll understand.”
Turning the knob, Corina stepped into the room where she’d slept since she was two. Where she’d giggled with her girlfriends and dreamed her dreams. Where Tommy Barnes serenaded her the night before senior prom.
Gone were the shades of pink and purple. The walls were a burnt orange, and a thick brown carpet covered the ancient hardwood. Pillows populated the corners and wooden chairs replaced her furniture. Indoor palms and ficus gave the room a garden feel, and soft string music drifted from ceiling-mounted speakers.
Pictures of Carlos were tastefully dispersed about the room, and then Corina understood. “She doesn’t want him forgotten.”
“It’s her biggest fear.”
“His room is the same?”
“As the day he left.” Ida Mae dusted her hand over a small wall table. “You live on, Corina. But Carlos will forever be a young, handsome, twenty-five-year-old with nothing to lose and everything to gain.”
Corina crossed the hall and entered his room. It was untouched. Pristine. The curtains were drawn against the sunlight, but Corina could clearly see her brother’s awards, trophies, posters, and pictures. All in the same places they’d been when he left for college, when he left for basic training, when he left this life.
“No one goes in except the cleaning lady once a week,” Ida Mae said as she came in behind her.
Corina sank with sadness into the nearest chair. “Ida Mae, is it ever going to get better?”
“I don’t know, darling, I don’t know.” Ida Mae’s hands smoothed across Corina’s shoulders. “Grief is a . . . well, not our friend.”
“That doesn’t give her the right to treat me as if I’m dead too.”
“She loves you, Corina.”
“She sure has a funny way of showing it.” She glanced up at Ida Mae, who carried tears in her eyes. “This can’t be an easy season for you either.”
“Come now.” Ida Mae wiped her eyes. “Let�
�s find you a fancy gown for this here premier. Then I’ll make us something scrumptious for dinner.”
Corina took a final survey of Carlos’s room. If she inhaled deep, she could catch a whiff of his hair gel. She smiled.
“Carlos, you use too much of that stuff.”
“Shut up. It’s my hair.”
“I can tell you now, no girl is ever going to want to touch it. Here, let me help you.”
“Fine, but don’t say a word about this.”
“It’s our secret.”
“I never thought this would happen to us, Ida Mae. We were going to have Sunday dinners once a month, spend our summers in Vermont, New Year’s in Hawaii, creating a whole passel of new traditions with our families.”
“Don’t give up, shug. Like you said, you ain’t dead yet.”
Back in Corina’s room, Ida Mae helped her choose a Versace, then carry her things downstairs. Then she paused in the safe room for Corina’s passport.
“Ida, can you drive me back to the airport?”
“You know I can shug. I hate that you came all the way here for that gown . . . I should’ve told you . . . I knew I should’ve told you.”
“It’s okay. I wanted to see you and Mama anyway.” And Daddy if he’d ever show his face.
Corina returned to the library as Ida Mae went for her purse and keys, ready to leave anytime Corina wanted. “Mama, Ida’s going to drive me back down to Atlanta. My flight leaves this evening.”
“Have a nice trip, Corina.”
“The quiet room is lovely. Peaceful.”
“Do you think he would’ve liked it?”
“Yes, I think he would.” Corina inched toward her mother, bending to give her forehead a quick kiss. “I’m sorry about earlier.”
“Never you mind.” Mama lifted her face, her smile fixed, her eyes empty. “It’s forgotten.”
Corina knelt on the floor next to her, leaning against the chair, and for a few minutes, rested there, watching the midmorning sun move over the lake.
