When we’re alone, my mother lets out a blissful sigh. “It’s perfect.”
“Will you be comfortable here?” I ask because that’s all there is right now. Not time. Sand whips through the funnel at an alarming rate. There’s only comfort, and how much my trust fund can buy.
She gives me a rueful smile. “Now that I’ve seen this, I can’t imagine being comfortable anywhere else.”
I look at the staircase dubiously. It’s beautiful but not really practical, especially for someone who has stage four cancer. “Maybe we can have an elevator put in. Or one of those chairs that zooms along the balcony.”
A horrified look. “Don’t even think about it. You will not do anything to destroy these stairs. It would be a travesty. They’re so beautiful, Harper.”
“Oh fine, I’m sure we can rig some kind of pulley system.”
She laughs a little. “There won’t be enough time to worry about it.”
How can she laugh about this? It’s one thing to be flippant in front of the real estate agent, but when we’re like this, being honest, all I want to do is break down. My stomach flips over, and I have to look away through the arched doorway. “God.”
“I’m sorry,” she says, immediately contrite. “I know this is hard for you.”
“No,” I tell her, because hard is a test on calculus. Hard is knowing I’ll inevitably see Sutton or Christopher again. This is more than hard; it’s unbearable. “I’m the one who’s sorry. We can buy this house, stairs or elevator or pulley system. Or hell, we can buy the original set back in LA, if that’s what you want. We’ll still be able to get fresh wheatgrass delivered every morning.”
She smiles. “We should be here.”
My throat tightens up, because no matter how hard I try, I seem to mess this up. She could have asked me for every cent in the damn trust fund. I’d have climbed the highest mountain or crawled into the deepest cave to find a cure. Instead she asked for something else—acceptance.
“Why Tanglewood? You never even visited here before this week.”
“Because this city has what you need.”
I scrunch my nose. “The library? I don’t need to oversee the reconstruction personally.”
“Nonsense. This is your project. You should be here for it. And besides, it’s not only the library. Tanglewood has the people you love.”
“Mom, I told you—”
“You do love Avery, don’t you?” she asks, sounding completely innocent. “She’s your best friend, and she’s taking the semester off to work on her thesis. That means she’ll be in town.”
My throat feels tight. “I’m not going to suddenly get married and have a baby.”
My mom has never pushed me to settle down, because she knows the
dangers of that more than anyone. And now she’ll never see me walk down the aisle. Never meet any grandchildren. The doctors have given her three to six months to live. Three to six months. How do they even calculate that?
There might have been three more months if she’d been willing to try their grueling treatment—or ironically, the treatment could have killed her faster.
She’s asked me to accept her decision, and mostly I have. There isn’t a protest I can stage that will change her mind. I’ve accepted it, but that doesn’t make it any less painful to bear.
“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.