“I did say yes.” And oh, it hurt to remember her joy. Taking a deep breath, she told her mother everything: her hopes, her doubts, her fears. “Am I crazy?” she begged at the end.
Her mother’s expression was sorrowful. “Are you sure he isn’t right about the hat lady? I mean, look what happened to her.”
Lucy bristled. “Anybody could have been hit crossing the highway.”
“Yes, of course. But you can’t tell me you weren’t already worried about her. I was shocked to hear that she’s only in her fifties. Her diet is terrible, most nights she has no shelter. You’ve done your best for her, but—”
Her throat closed. “Was it good enough? Is that what you’re asking?”
“I’m not suggesting you could or should have done more. Lucy, what you did for her was extraordinary. I’m simply asking if she might not be better off where she’s taken care of.”
“Can you imagine her in a room in a nursing home? Maybe sharing with someone else. Able to go out only under supervision.” Her voice shook. “Those places lock their doors, Mom.”
Her mother was silent for a moment, her eyes troubled. “No,” she said at last. “No, I can’t. She’s a little bit like a wild creature. But, unlike you, I can see why Adrian might believe he’s doing the right thing.”
Lucy slumped. “I can, too. It isn’t really his decision that bothers me. It’s the way he came to it. He didn’t even talk to me, Mom. He’d made up his mind before he got here that first night, and he never even considered changing it. She’d made herself a life here, one she chose. Surely there was a way to compromise.”
Her mother held up her hand. “Don’t get mad at me. I agree. And I can see why you can’t marry a man who won’t talk over big decisions with you, and actually listen to you.”
“Oh, Mom.” With no warning, the tears spilled over this time. “I wish I didn’t love him!”
Her mother scooted her chair around to Lucy’s side of the table so she could once again hold her. “I know,” her mother murmured. “I know.”
ADRIAN DID CALL that week, although once again he sounded harried and…different. He wasn’t her Adrian, he was the impatient, guarded man Lucy had met that first day, when she walked into his office. The one who’d wanted to believe she was lying to him, for reasons she couldn’t imagine.
What must it be like, to always assume the worst about people?
She’d have sworn she had discovered who he really was beneath that hard veneer, but now she wondered. He’d been only ten years old when his mother disappeared from his life. A little boy. He’d had over twenty years to be influenced by his father, to take on the habits and mind set that made him who he was. Probably she’d been naive, even foolish, to believe he could somehow shed those aspects of himself, as if he were wriggling out of his skin and leaving it behind, just because he’d recovered childhood memories, found his mother.
Found me.
He did say, the first time he called, “I know you’re upset with me, but you have to look at reality, Lucy.”
“We had a real life before you came to Middleton.” She tried so hard to sound as calm as he did, but her voice defied her by trembling. “It wasn’t so bad.”
He was silent for so long, she almost cracked and started babbling, conceding him anything he wanted.
But at last he said, “I’m getting the feeling you wish you’d never come looking for me.”
She squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself not to cry. “I didn’t say that. I wouldn’t. She needs you, and you need her.”
“What about you?” he asked softly. “What do you need?”
“For you to talk to me,” she whispered, remembering everything she and her mother had said. “To really talk to me.”
“What do you think I’m doing now?” he snapped. He sounded ragged, even angry. He muttered something she took as an expletive. “I want to see you, but I can’t get away until the weekend. Can we put this on hold until then?”
Did that mean his decision wasn’t final? Hope, fragile but still alive, stirred in her. That he might actually listen this time?
“Yes. Okay,” she said. “I’m here.”
At last, Adrian’s voice softened. “I wish I was there with you. Or you were here with me.”
Would she have wanted to be there in Seattle with him? Probably home alone in his condo, which she pictured as ultramodern, with chrome and neutral colors and none of the messiness her idea of real life produced. If she were there, they’d still be talking on the phone, because he’d be in his office.
But she knew suddenly she didn’t care.
Yes, she had made discoveries of her own these past weeks. Perhaps, in showing Middleton to Adrian, she’d seen it anew herself. However it had happened, she knew now that she loved her hometown. She loved living here, knowing her customers, knowing her neighbors, feeling her family’s love and support behind her. If she could, she’d travel—she did want to see more of the world. But she wanted to be able to come home again. Starting all over in a new place wasn’t the adventure she’d yearned for. Loving someone, trusting him, taking the risk of giving so much of herself to him, that was the real adventure.
And for that, she’d leave Middleton in a heartbeat. If Adrian really was the man she’d fallen in love with, she couldn’t imagine wanting to be anywhere he wasn’t. She was good at making friends. She could build a satisfying career, pursue hobbies, perhaps talk him into buying a house where she could garden. And he would come home to her every night, however tired, however frustrated by his day. They’d talk, they’d make love, they’d start a family of their own.
Her choice would be him, with no hesitation. If he was the man she wanted so desperately to believe he was.
“I wish that, too,” she admitted.
His voice lowered to a rumble. “I’ll see you this weekend. I promise. If things work out the way I think they will…” He paused, and she heard a woman’s voice in the background. Carol, no doubt.
Carol, who was the one who’d been looking for the assisted-living home for his mother. Carol, who didn’t even know the hat lady.
He came back on. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you this weekend. Friday, if I can get away, otherwise Saturday.”
“Yes. Okay.”
He didn’t say “I love you.” Lucy supposed he didn’t want to, with Carol standing there.
But, setting down the phone, she found the absence of the words bothered her. It seemed symbolic. The arrogant, hard Adrian Rutledge, attorney-at-law, wouldn’t let anybody see him being soft.
Still, he had implied that they still had time to talk, that there might be room for negotiation. So she would let herself feel hopeful. Because he did love her. She believed that much.
“YOU’RE TAKING HER, just like that?”
Lucy didn’t even know why she was in shock. Yes, she did—she’d foolishly imagined that he was promising her something that apparently had never crossed his mind.
When he said, “Can we put this on hold?” he hadn’t meant that there was still time to talk about his mom’s future. He’d probably thought he could pacify her in person. Or else he hadn’t understood that his decision wasn’t just about how happy or unhappy the hat lady would be, but was also about him.
This scene had begun playing out last week, and all it was doing now was concluding. She was the idiot, thinking that, because his voice had softened, she’d gotten through to him. Apparently she’d been an idiot all along, believing that once he knew his mother he’d slow down and think about what would give her the best quality of life.
Instead, he scowled at her. “What do you mean, just like that? I let you know last night that I was coming.”
Yes, he had. She’d found a message on her phone at home when she got in at nearly midnight after closing the restaurant.
I got lucky and found an opening for Mom at a great place. I’ve already called Slater. I’ll be over in the morning to get her. Meet me at the hospital? Say, eleven?
Too late to call him back, or so she told herself. He couldn’t mean it. Or…was there any chance he’d gotten his mom a bed at the nursing home here in Middleton as a temporary measure, and that he wanted to surprise her?
Dumb, dumb, dumb, she told herself now.
“She’s going to be so scared.”
“More scared than she was living on the street?” He snorted, as if she were being ridiculous. After a pause, he conceded, “It’ll be an adjustment.”
Her face felt stiff; her voice came out wooden. “Why didn’t you just have her transported in an ambulance? Or a helicopter? And saved yourself the trip?”
He moved his shoulders. “I, uh, liked the idea of us riding the ferry together. I thought…she might be excited.”
For a moment her heart quivered. The man she’d fallen in love with was still in there. But then she imagined the hat lady in a room at an assisted-living facility where the doors were undoubtedly locked. She would have no freedom at all.
“The place has a garden.” Adrian sounded tentative. “Her room looks out on some roses.”
Lucy swallowed a lump in her throat. “Can she go out? Maybe take walks?”
She saw the answer on his face. Sucking in a breath, she told him, “I said goodbye to your mom already. I just waited to—”
“Tell me what you thought?”
She gave a twisted smile. “Something like that.”
He reached a hand out to her, his voice gruff, urgent. “Lucy…I know I said we’d talk, but I can’t get back until next weekend. Friday night—”
She backed away, not meeting his eyes. “Don’t bother.”
He flinched. “So in the end this is about my mother.”
“No.” Lucy shook her head and took one last, agonizing look at his lean face and the turmoil in his eyes. In a choked voice, she said, “It’s about you.” Then she turned and fled.
Through the haze of tears, she had no idea whether people were staring as she hurried out of the elevator and crossed the lobby then the parking lot. She knew only that Adrian didn’t follow.
ALL ABOUT HIM? Adrian thought incredulously. Who was she kidding?
His fingers flexed on the steering wheel as he followed the line of weekend traffic. In the end, it was really all about her. Or maybe it was about his mother. Was Lucy making the point that, while he might be Elizabeth Rutledge’s son, she still knew her best?
Feeling sick, he thought, It’s true. But what in hell did she think he should do? Walk Mom to the hospital door and wave cheerily as she pushed her shopping cart toward the highway then God knows where? She was fifty-six years old. She had multiple personalities. Letting her continue to live on the street wasn’t an option.
“I don’t know this place.” Beside him, Elizabeth’s voice quavered. She gripped the armrest so hard, her knuckles shone white. “Where are we going?”
They hadn’t even reached the Hood Canal Bridge, and he’d already repeated himself twenty or so times. But he smiled reassuringly anyway and said, “Remember? We’re going to ride on the ferry.”
“And then you’re taking me home. Right?”
“Don’t you want to ride on the ferry? Remember when we used to do that? We’d walk on, and go outside so the wind blew on our faces. Well, this time we’re driving the car on.”
She stiffened. “That doesn’t look like a ferry.”
The highway emerged from a long curve to reveal the bridge ahead, the broad canal sparkling beneath.
He explained that they still had an hour’s drive.
“When will we be home?”
What, in her mind, was home? Adrian wondered. The hospital? One of her hideouts? The church? Middleton in general?
“Remember, I talked to you about the new place you’ll be living.”
“I don’t want a new place.” She was definite about that. “I don’t think I want to ride on the ferry, not if you won’t take me home.”
“Remember the accident? You still need extra care. You’re not very strong yet, Mom.”
“Father Joseph always lets me stay in my room at the church. I can do that. Or Lucy. Lucy would let me stay.”
Goddamn it. She probably would. But Adrian couldn’t foist his problems on Lucy. Not now, when it was clear she didn’t love him. Not really, not the way he’d believed when he had been riding on a powerful wave of hope.
And it wasn’t as if she’d ever offered, he realized, his thoughts crystalline and sharp-edged. The anger he clung to was keeping the agony at bay, but it was there, barely hiding around the corner. He focused on the anger, shutting out the grief. Until he got his mother settled, he couldn’t afford to break down.
Yeah, Lucy wanted him to find a solution, but she’d never suggested an alternative. Apparently he was supposed to have figured out a perfect answer—which, of course, she already knew, but hadn’t shared with him. Maybe it had been a test, one he’d failed. Well, to hell with her, he thought, teeth clenched, and knew he didn’t mean it.
“I don’t know where we are,” his mother repeated. Her frightened gaze swung from the landscape to him. “I want to go back now!”
Gripping the steering wheel so hard he swore the plastic groaned, Adrian explained again. And again. And again.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
STILL CLENCHING the steering wheel, Adrian tried to count his blessings. At least his mother was herself today, not Queen Elizabeth or the poet. She was definitely in the here and now. Adrian tried to be glad.
Lucy had packed his mother’s pitiful store of belongings into a couple of suitcases, which he suspected she’d bought for the occasion. His mother had already been dressed when he arrived at the hospital, wearing a pretty flowered dress with a wide belt, comfortable shoes and a hat, one of those small oval ones that perched rakishly atop her head, edged by net that dipped over her forehead. It made him think of Audrey Hepburn.
He grimaced. No, if she glanced in a mirror she’d see Elizabeth Taylor, he supposed.
With only another dozen repetitions of the same conversation, they made it to Poulsbo, then onto Bainbridge Island, and finally to the ferry landing. She fell silent briefly when they drove on, the ramp rattling beneath the tires, and the ferry workers directed him to park on one side. Adrian set the brake and turned off the engine, then closed his eyes briefly. His neck and shoulders were so tight, he wasn’t sure he could unbend enough to unlatch the door or get out.
After a minute, he said, “Shall we go up? I always liked watching the ferry pull away from the dock.”
“We won’t get off, will we? We’ll ride it over and back, the way we always did. That might be fun.”
He unfastened her seat belt and his own, and got out of the car. Panic was building in his chest. What happened when they got to the other side? Would she fight him? How the hell could he leave her at the assisted-living place if she was terrified or crying?
He heard Lucy’s voice in his head. Did you ask her what she wants?
He didn’t have to. He knew. She wanted to return to her familiar small-town streets, her familiar routine. Garage sales on Friday and Saturday mornings, the church day care on Sundays, the library, the hair salon, Safeway and the Pancake Haus and Lucy’s café.
Grimy, pushing her stolen shopping cart, inviting pity and charity.
Adrian held open the heavy door for his mother. She climbed the steps slowly, holding up everyone else. Once on the passenger deck, she had to sit immediately, looking pale and alarmingly fragile.
Would she be happier at the Middleton assisted-living facility, even if she’d be confined there, too, and he couldn’t see her very often?
But Lucy would be there. Not with him in Seattle the way he’d dreamed. Believed she would be.
He realized, as his mother shakily rose and leaned on his arm so they could proceed slowly toward the back of the ferry and the outdoor deck that looked down on the still loading cars and the dock, that he was as bewildered as she was.
He’d caught one
of the first ferries that morning, eager to arrive. Of course he’d only see Lucy briefly, but he could kiss her, talk to her, make plans. He’d go back next weekend.
But the minute he saw her, he knew something was wrong. She’d looked at him as if he were a stranger. When he tried to remember all the things she’d said, they blurred.
He did remember one accusation. “I thought you were getting to know her. But you never saw her as a person, did you? Only as she related to you.”
His mother wrapped her hands around the railing and leaned against it, her head lifted for a minute, her eyes closed, as a breeze toyed with her white curls. She breathed in as though the salty air tasted like fine wine. For that brief instant, apparently oblivious to the chattering family who had joined them out here, she looked at peace.
She had always been fragile. As long as Adrian could remember, he had wanted to shield her from the world. Was that so bad?
“That summer I went to visit Maman and Grandpère in Nova Scotia, where did you go?” he asked.
Her eyes opened and she turned her head. After a minute, she said in a voice so soft he had to bend closer to hear, “It was a hospital. I think. He said I’d get better.”
“Did you?”
“They made me feel so cloudy.” Her eyes pleaded with him for understanding. “I wasn’t me. I don’t know who I was. I don’t like hospitals.”
“Where did you go after you left the hospital?”
Her forehead crinkled in puzzlement. “I tried to go home, but I couldn’t find it.”
“Home to me in Edmonds, or to your parents?”
The ferry horn sounded, making them both jump. The gulls cried and swooped overhead the way he remembered from when he was a boy. She looked away, watching the water churn between them and the dock. “I don’t know. There was someplace I thought I should go. But I couldn’t.”
He felt sick, imagining her homeless, frightened, unable to remember even how to call her own mother.
Someone Like Her Page 19
