“Don’t rush home,” her grandmother said. “When we’re finished here I’ll be having an early night so I won’t be good company.”
Were they suggesting that she stay the night with Seth? “I won’t be—”
“Live while you’re young,” Dora urged and Jane nodded.
“Before your hips creak.”
“Go get him, honey,” Rita said, punching the air with her fist.
Fliss fled.
* * *
DORA WAITED UNTIL the door slammed. “Success.”
“Do you think so?” Martha looked doubtful. “Far be it from me to tell you how to handle your own granddaughter, Eugenia, but I think you almost overplayed your hand there. Especially the part where you tried to get her to stay the night with him.”
Jane nodded. “Doesn’t do to interfere. That never turns out well.”
Eugenia slapped her cards on the table. “With my own daughter, I didn’t interfere enough and I should have done. If I have one regret in life, it’s that.”
Dora put her cards down, too. “You’re too hard on yourself. What could you have done?”
“I don’t know, but I should have done something. That’s what. I knew that marriage wouldn’t work out, and I stood by and let it happen.”
“That’s not how I remember it. She made her own decisions, Eugenia. She did what she thought was right for her. And since when did children ever listen to their parents? Even grown children. She probably wouldn’t have listened to you anyway.”
“Maybe not, but I wish I’d tried.” Eugenia looked at the door, where Fliss had recently disappeared. “When a marriage goes wrong, it doesn’t just affect one person. It reverberates. It’s like an earthquake. It destroys some structures and weakens others.”
“Fliss doesn’t seem weakened. She’s a strong girl. If nothing else, her childhood taught her how to protect herself.”
“That’s what worries me.” Eugenia removed her glasses and rubbed her eyes. Since her fall she felt tired. More tired than she had in a long time. It had shaken her feeling of security, made her fear a time she might need to depend on people for help. “She protects herself a little too well. No one can get close to her. She holds everything she feels inside because that bastard my daughter married made her feel worthless.”
Jane gasped. “Eugenia! Sex talk and poker isn’t enough for you? You have to use that language, too?”
“If I could think of another word that fitted, I would have used it.”
“You did what you could. You threw him out of your house.”
“But she went back to him. She always went back to him.”
“Love is a complicated thing.”
“Particularly when it’s one-sided.” Eugenia rubbed her fingers over her forehead. “I should have sold this place and given her the money for a divorce.”
“You offered. She didn’t want that.”
“If I’d sold it without telling her, she wouldn’t have had a choice.”
“And she would have lost the place that was her sanctuary. And a sanctuary for the kids. Every summer she brought them here.”
“And at the end of every summer they left again. Back to hell.”
“He abandoned his family a decade ago, Eugenia. Why are you talking about this now?”
“Because his legacy lives on. I see it in the way Fliss lives her life.”
“Maybe our sexy vet will change that.”