Angie looked from face to face. "What in the hell is going on?"
"Dont you swear, Angela," Mama said. She sounded tired. "Business at the restaurant is bad. I dont see how we can keep going. "
"But . . . Papa loved it," Angie said.
Tears sprang into her mothers dark eyes. "You hardly need to tell me this. "
Angie looked at Livvy. "Whats wrong with the business?"
Livvy shrugged. "The economy is bad. "
"DeSarias has been doing well for thirty years. It cant be--"
"I cant believe youre going to tell us how to run a restaurant," Livvy snapped, lighting up a cigarette. "What would a copywriter know about it?"
"Creative director. And its running a restaurant, not performing brain surgery. You just give people good food at good prices. How hard can--"
"Stop it, you two," Mira said. "Mama doesnt need this. "
Angie looked at her mother, but didnt know what to say. A family that only moments before had been the bedrock of her life felt suddenly cracked.
They fell into silence. Angie was thinking about the restaurant . . . about her papa, who had always been able to make her laugh, even when her heart had felt close to rending . . . and about the safe world where theyd all grown up together.
The restaurant was the anchor of their family; without it, they might drift away from one another. And that, the floating on ones own tide, was a lonely way to live. Angie knew.
"Angie could help," Mama said.
Livvy made a sound of disbelief. "She doesnt know anything about the business. Papas princess never had--"
"Hush, Livvy," Mama said, staring at Angie.
Angie understood everything in that one look. Mama was offering her a place to hide out away from the painful memories in this city. To Mama, coming home was the answer to every question. "Livvy is right," Angie said slowly. "I dont know anything about the business. "
"You helped that restaurant in Olympia. The success of your campaign made the newspapers," Mira said, studying her. "Papa made us read all the clippings. "
"Which Angie mailed to him," Livvy said, exhaling smoke.
Angie had helped put that restaurant back on the map. But all it had taken was a good ad campaign and some money for marketing.
"Maybe you could help us," Mira said at last.
"I dont know," Angie said. Shed left West End so long ago, certain that the whole world awaited her. How would it feel to be back?
"You could live in the beach house," Mama said.
The beach house.
Angie thought about the tiny cottage on the wild, windswept coast, and a dozen treasured memories came to her, one after another.
Shed always felt safe and loved there. Protected.
Maybe she could learn to smile again there, in that place where, as a girl, shed laughed easily and often.
She looked around her, at this too-empty house that was so full of sadness; it sat on a block in a city that held too many bad memories. Maybe going home was the answer, for a while at least, until she figured out where she belonged now.
&
nbsp; She wouldnt feel alone at the cottage; not like she did in Seattle.