Versions of Her

by Andrea Lochen

  Vinnie leaned forward confidentially, and her ponytail fell over her shoulder. “Some of the members aren’t too keen on the idea, but frankly, I think it’s genius. It’ll revitalize the community and generate more business for Lamson’s Market and Tom’s Marine Supply. And what a great investment for you girls. Your mom would be so pleased.”

  “Thank you.” She didn’t want Vinnie’s compliments to mean anything to her, but they did. Too many summers had passed with Mrs. Fletcher as her second mom for Melanie to totally distance herself from her. She couldn’t help remembering the way Mrs. Fletcher had always wanted to braid Melanie’s hair when she was a little girl, when Mrs. Fletcher had had only boys and was pining for a daughter. She had especially loved doing something she called a fishtail braid then tucking daisies between the sections of Melanie’s hair. Melanie had always felt like a wood nymph afterward.

  “I am so, so sorry for your loss,” Vinnie said, touching Melanie’s shoulder. “I know it’s been a few years, but I haven’t seen you since...” She drifted off, clearly uncomfortable. “I was just heartsick when I heard the news.” She looked heartsick—her complexion had suddenly lost its healthy yoga glow. The Fletchers sent a flower arrangement, her dad had said. Something big and expensive. They didn’t make it to the funeral, though. For the first time, Melanie wondered why Lavinia hadn’t made it to Christine’s funeral. What kept Vinnie from saying goodbye to her one-time lover and best friend?

  “Thank you,” Melanie repeated. “We were all heartsick too. We miss her terribly.” It hadn’t gotten any easier accepting people’s condolences. “I know how much you meant to each other,” she added experimentally, lifting her eyes to see what Vinnie would make of that last comment.

  Vinnie squinted at Melanie for a few seconds, pursing her glossy pink lips as if trying to decide how best to reply. Did I ruffle her otherwise-poised demeanor? She touched her tassel necklace again as if it were a talisman.

  “Hey, Mel,” Ben said, setting the watering can down on the porch step with a clunk. “Did you still want to get Chinese food like we were talking about? I know you said you were starving.”

  He was throwing her a lifeline, a get-out-of-the-awkward-conversation-free card. Even though his timing was positively awful, she loved him so much right then that she wanted to kiss him. But awkwardness notwithstanding, she needed to have the conversation. She wanted to face the woman who was somehow so ordinary and familiar but also a total stranger. Lavinia Birdwell Fletcher was her mom’s biggest secret, and Melanie wanted to learn absolutely anything and everything she could from her.

  “That sounds great,” she told Ben, trying to convey her understanding and gratitude with her eyes. “You wouldn’t mind picking it up, though, would you?” She didn’t even know where the nearest Chinese restaurant was, but she knew he would find out or figure out an alternative. She hadn’t eaten since dinner the previous night, but surprisingly, she wasn’t very hungry.

  Vinnie was standing in the shade of their maple tree, looking upward. “I heard your dad is remarried and living in Albuquerque.” Before Melanie could respond, she added, “The woman who was renting this place, Lucinda, was a major gossip.”

  “Tucson, actually,” Melanie corrected. “They’ve been married a little over a year now.” She considered adding, They’re good for each other, or They’re very happy together but was worried either would be taken as the evidence that Vinnie seemed to be looking for, that their dad hadn’t loved their mom enough to remain a widower. “So you guys have still been coming up here every summer?”

  “Almost every summer. It’s been hard to get the whole gang together the last few years. It’s been pretty scattered—Beau and his wife one week, Jillian and her girlfriends another. Stephen has been coming up in the winters to get some writing done. This summer it’s been mostly me and Marie—my partner’s—family. I think you met them at the Memorial Day cookout.” Her voice was all studied nonchalance, as if daring Melanie to be shocked. But Melanie wasn’t shocked, of course, because she had already known that and so much more about Vinnie.

  “I did,” she said, sitting on the bottom porch step. “They’re very nice.”

  “Except for Marie’s son, you mean.” Vinnie fluidly sank onto the grass and sat cross-legged across from Melanie. “Nicholas is a bit of an ass. He doesn’t really like to acknowledge that his mom and I are more than friends.”

  “Well, he certainly doesn’t mind using your lake house, though, does he?” Melanie said, and Vinnie snorted with laughter. Her eyes widened in mischievous delight, and she looked like she was reappraising Melanie, finding something there that she hadn’t before, something that she liked.

  “When your mom and I were little girls, we used to imagine our futures. I was going to be a supermodel, the next Twiggy, and have eight kids—don’t ask me how I planned to do both—and your mom was going to be a deep-sea diver and discover all these shipwrecks and hidden treasures.”

  “I wish she’d stuck with it.” Melanie forced a small smile. “It would’ve been cool to have a treasure-hunting mom.”

  “Kind of hard to be a diver when you refuse to swim, though,” Vinnie said matter-of-factly. “I understand why she gave it up, but I still wish she had found a way to come to terms with it. I knew she probably wouldn’t ever be able to forgive me, but I wanted her to at least forgive herself.”

  Melanie sat very still, almost afraid to speak. Is Vinnie hinting at the rift that had ended their friendship? But didn’t Mom stop swimming as a result of the boy’s drowning? “Forgive herself for what?” she asked with her own studied nonchalance, but inside, her empty stomach was a jittery mess.

  Vinnie trained her catlike eyes on Melanie as if she were trying to parse out how much Melanie already knew and how much she should tell her. Melanie tried to look calm and impartial—a trustworthy confidante.

  “My daughter’s near drowning,” Vinnie said finally.

  “But why would my mom blame herself for that?” Melanie asked as she remembered the statue-like way her mom had watched as Jilly had been pulled out of the lake, the way her fist had been pressed against her mouth as if holding back a scream.

  Vinnie’s shoulders were curling upward toward her ears, her arms hugging her chest. She looked like a little girl—like the version of Jilly Melanie remembered—rather than a middle-aged woman. “Because she wasn’t there.”

  Melanie frowned. No, her mom hadn’t been there. She had arrived well after Mr. Fletcher. But none of the adults had been. It wasn’t like they had needed a babysitter or lifeguard. “But we were good swimmers,” she said, “and mostly teenagers. We didn’t need to be watched all the time.”

  “But she did watch you.” Vinnie fingered the embroidered neckline of her tunic. “Didn’t you know that? There was an accident when we were teenagers, a drowning when Christine was a lifeguard on duty. So whenever you girls went swimming, she watched you like a hawk. You were never out of her sight. I think she would have been happiest if she could have convinced you to wear life jackets the whole summer. As much as she and I meant to each other,” she said, eyeing Melanie suddenly as if challenging her, “you girls meant even more.”

  Melanie scanned her memory for an overprotective mom hovering on the dock as they splashed on their wakeboards, biting her nails as they carelessly pushed each other off the raft. But her brain couldn’t dredge up the image. All she could picture were her mom’s athletic legs and khaki shorts as she bent over Melanie to hand her a glass of lemonade, condensation dripping down the sides. Often she would sit in a lawn chair on the shore, immersed in a thick book. Was she only pretending to read behind her sunglasses? Was she really surveying us the whole time, making sure another child didn’t drown on her watch?

  So why wasn’t my mom watching us that afternoon? she wanted to ask Vinnie. Where was she? But she was scared she already knew the answer.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Kelsey watched her boss’s face turn from enthusiastic to
concerned to despairing. “Part-time?” Beth echoed. “Only two to three days a week?”

  “Until at least February,” Kelsey said. “That way I can still help you train my replacement before I need to go.” She had done the math and decided an April opening would be manageable for the Montclare Inn. But that meant she’d need significantly more time during regular business hours to meet with contractors and Josh’s brother, the accountant. She thought if she tightened her belt a little—no more coffee and doughnuts or lunches from Soup, Sandwiches, and Such, no more expensive cuts of meat or exotic vegetables from the grocery store—she and Sprocket could get by on her part-time salary and savings until the bed-and-breakfast started making a profit. Which, hopefully—oh God, she didn’t like thinking about what would happen if the B and B was a total flop—she would never be able to face Melanie again—it would.

  “I am going to miss you so much,” Beth said, shuffling around her desk to wrap Kelsey in a hug.

  “I’m not leaving yet!” Kelsey said, laughing, but secretly, she was pleased by Beth’s reaction. Her boss’s hug felt warm and maternal, and Kelsey let herself relax into it, resting her chin on Beth’s shoulder.

  “At least it’s for a good reason. Your own bed-and-breakfast? I always knew you were going places.”

  When she left Beth’s office, she could hear Taylor up front, arguing with someone—at least as argumentative as sweet Taylor ever sounded. “She’s in a meeting right now,” Taylor said helplessly.

  “Can’t you just let her know I’m here? I’ve only got five minutes, and she’s going to be pissed if she thinks I blew her off.”

  Leona. The teenager’s black hair was streaked with blue, and she was wearing a maroon ruffled skirt with dangling garters that looked like something a dominatrix would don. Kelsey stood in the hallway, watching her for several moments. Her urge to slap the girl hadn’t gone away.

  “Leona?” She marched toward the reception desk. “Do you have a second to talk? Great.” Before the teenager could protest, Kelsey was ushering her outside. It was a beautiful day, the sky the same aquamarine as a swimming pool, and her future felt just as blindingly bright and clear with the prospect of the bed-and-breakfast and her mom being restored to her. She had all but given her resignation, and besides, it wasn’t as if Beth would fire her. She needed her. So Kelsey had nothing to lose by speaking her mind.

  “Your mom is one of the kindest women I know,” she started. “And you are making her life a living hell.”

  Leona’s eyeliner-enhanced eyes bugged out at her. “Really? Little Miss Employee of the Month is going to give me a lecture? Why don’t you just stay the hell out of it? Go and be the model employee, the daughter my mom wishes she had, somewhere else.”

  Kelsey swallowed hard. Leona’s retort sounded eerily familiar, like something Kelsey would have said to her mom or sister in her teenage years and early twenties. “I am far from perfect,” she said softly. “I am always screwing up and letting people down. And when I was your age, I was a total bitch to my mom, then she died unexpectedly, and I never got to apologize and let her know how much I loved her.” It was less painful to admit when she knew that the opportunity to put things right was just around the corner.

  Leona scuffed her knee-high combat boots against the sidewalk as if she were bored. “Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t see how your sob story relates to me and my mom.”

  “You’ve got to grow up, Leona. Learn from my mistakes. Your mom doesn’t want me as her daughter. She wants you. She loves you despite all your attention-seeking crazy-ass behavior.” Unexpectedly, a stinging pressure built behind Kelsey’s eyes, like she was going to cry, because it was true, not just for Beth and Leona but for Kelsey and her mom too. Her mom hadn’t wanted her to be a clone of Melanie after all. She had loved Kelsey for herself. She had only wanted Kelsey to be safe, healthy, and happy.

  “So stop with the self-destruction,” Kelsey said. “Stop running amok just to get your mom’s attention. You already have it. But if you keep wearing her down, you might lose it one day. Then you’ll miss out on the adult mother-daughter relationship that I would give anything to have right now.” Please, please, please, she thought. Please let me have that with my mom. Give her back to me.

  Leona blew her long bangs out of her eyes and scowled. “Gee. Thanks a bunch, Dr. Phil.” She walked back inside, but Kelsey thought that maybe, just maybe, she had gotten through to Leona.

  Climbing into her car, she noticed Josh’s pick-up truck parked at the end of the row. He’s working right now? Why didn’t he come by to say hello when I stopped in to talk to Beth? Worry nagged at her as she suddenly realized she hadn’t talked to him for almost two days, not since the night of the disastrous dinner at the lake house when she’d gone missing for hours, leaving him to finally give up on her and drive himself home alone. She had texted him a brief apology the next day, and he’d replied, That’s okay, but their exchange had ended there. She had been so busy squaring everything away with Charlene and making logistical plans for the bed-and-breakfast, so distracted by the contemplation of her mom’s possible return, that she hadn’t even spared a moment’s notice for the boy she thought she just might be falling in love with. She was a hideous excuse for a human being.

  She marched back into Green Valley Pet Lodge, right past Taylor, Leona, Beth, and a couple of customers who were dropping off their dogs, and straight to Pooch Place, where Josh wasn’t hard to find. He was in the back kitchen, measuring out cups of dry kibble into carefully labeled bowls.

  “Hey,” she said, hoping that he would look up at her with his lovable, lopsided grin and all would instantly be forgiven.

  But he barely lifted his eyes from the twenty-five-pound bag of dog food he was pouring. “Hey.”

  “I just wanted to tell you again how sorry I am about Sunday night.” She took a few hesitant steps into the room. “Melanie and I really got into it, and we lost track of time. When I realized how late it was and that you had already left, I felt awful,” she said. “But the good news is that I persuaded her not to sell the house. She’s going to let me have a shot at this whole bed-and-breakfast thing.” She paused for his reaction, for a smile, for a congratulations, for anything, but none came. “So because of that, yesterday and today have been such a whirlwind with canceling the listing with our realtor and telling Beth I’d like to cut back to working part-time while I prepare for the B and B’s opening—” Still no reaction. “That I didn’t even realize I had never called you to properly explain. I know there’s no excuse for my rudeness, but please forgive me and know how sorry I am. I didn’t intend to make you feel like you didn’t matter to me, if that’s how you felt.”

  “It’s okay,” Josh said flatly. He returned the large bag of dog food to a cubby and reached for a small pink bag for dogs with food allergies.

  “Are you sure?” she asked, advancing to the kitchen island where he stood. “Because you don’t seem... okay with it.” His indifference was starting to alarm her. Did I simply imagine the click between us? No, she couldn’t have—it was the sweetest, most earnest thing she had felt with a man in years. There had to be more to his reaction that she didn’t understand. “Is there something I can do to make it up to you?”

  He finally looked up, his sunburst eyes unreadable behind his glasses. “Not really. In fact, it’s probably good Sunday night happened. It opened my eyes to how we both feel about each other.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked warily.

  He turned his back to open a tin of cat food with the electric can opener. When the mechanical whirring stopped, he said at last, “I guess I hadn’t realized quite to what extent, but I’d fallen for you ages ago, and it was always clear to me that you didn’t feel the same way. So the last few weeks have been great and all, but I couldn’t help wondering, why now? What changed? Why were you suddenly seeing me in this new light? But now I know it wasn’t the same for you. That you weren’t really seeing me in the same light I see
you. I’m just a guy you work with. I’m just someone to occasionally have fun with, not serious-boyfriend material.”

  His mask of indifference had slipped and revealed how dejected he really was. His long-limbed body looked large and out of place in the tiny, fluorescent-lit kitchen. She wanted to step around the butcher-block island and embrace him, but she felt too unsure of herself and unsure of what his reaction would be. Instead, she leaned against the counter so that they were directly across from each other. Their eyes met.

  “I don’t just see you as occasional fun, Josh,” she started. “I mean, it’s been a lot of fun—don’t get me wrong—but it’s more than that. The light, the click, whatever you want to call it, it’s real for me too. And I’m sorry it’s taken me so fricking long, but I’ve been having some help from my sister lately, if you can believe it, in recognizing what I should have seen a long time ago.”

  “And what is that?” Josh asked, a skeptical tilt to his head, a reluctant hopefulness in his eyes.

  Heart racing, she skirted around the island and put her hands on his arms. They felt strong and reliable under her fingertips, like the kind of arms she could fall asleep in at night. “You are serious-boyfriend material,” she said. “And we’re perfect for each other.”

  The reluctance in his eyes melted into understanding. In one swift motion, he had scooped her up and set her down on the kitchen island, right next to the open bag of dog kibble and a bowl of slimy cat food. He stood gravely in front of her, so intensely serious that she felt a little weak in the knees, so she wrapped her legs around his waist to steady them.

  “I’m so glad to hear you say that, K. K.,” he said and bent down to kiss her.

  She felt like dissolving at the touch of his warm body pressed against hers, his large hands on her back, and the gentle graze of his mouth against hers. She was just starting to wonder if they could lie down on the kitchen island without anyone walking in and noticing them making out, or getting any of the cat food in her hair, for that matter, when Josh pulled away.