Family For Beginners

She didn’t feel lucky. She’d been so positive that she could make this work, that she could help, but she’d blown any chance of that by mentioning her mother.

Should she tell Julia about that? No, because then questions would follow. Questions Flora didn’t want to answer. And she didn’t want to admit to her stupid fantasy of showing up like Mary Poppins and transforming their lives.

She forced her mind back to work. “We need to scrub out these buckets and change the water.”

“This job is all glamor. I’ll scrub the buckets, you deal with the flowers and cut the stems. You’re so good at that part. I mangle everything I touch.” Julia picked up a bucket. “It seems to me that it went really well. I’m no psychologist, but it could have been a disaster. Those kids have had massive change forced upon them. They’re trying to adjust, and then their dad brings home another woman. That could have gone badly.”

It had gone badly.

“Mmm.”

“You could have felt the need to compete with the dead wife.”

“Trust me, there is no competing. Becca has already won hands down.” That, at least, she could be honest about. “She’s the Becca, of Becca’s Body.”

“Oh wow, I took one of her classes once. I needed a month of physio to recover.”

“According to Izzy, everything she did, she did brilliantly.”

Julia emptied out the old water and cleaned the bucket. “She loved her mother. We see those we love through rose-tinted glasses.”

Or Izzy could have been exaggerating to make her feel small and insecure.

“Becca didn’t have a single vice. She didn’t eat carbs, she did a ton of stuff for charity. Even her hair did everything it was supposed to do.” Thinking about it made Flora gloomy. “Just looking at her photo made me feel like a sloth. Her body was so hard and honed you would have bruised yourself if you’d bumped into her. I’m more of a soft landing.”

“Flora—”

“You should have seen the

pictures.” She trimmed stems and put the flowers back into fresh water. “She was so thin and perfect.”

“—and also no longer here,” Julia said gently. “You don’t need to compete, Flora. Be yourself. Be you. That’s the woman Jack can’t stay away from.”

Being herself had never really worked for her in the past. She’d spent so many years trying to please her aunt that at some point she’d lost track of who she was.

Julia finished cleaning the last of the buckets. “So what happens next?”

“Nothing. He hasn’t called.”

“Is that unusual? How often does he usually call?”

“Every evening, before we go to sleep.”

Julia stared at her. “What do you talk about?”

“I don’t know. What we’ve done during the day, that kind of thing.” They mostly focused on the present. She didn’t talk about her past, and he didn’t talk about his wife. And there was something intimate about those late-night conversations when they were both in bed. Not that they were in bed together, of course, but it was the next best thing and the closest they were going to get right now.

“If you’re talking that often, you should definitely call him.”

And force him to admit the kids didn’t like her? The fact that he hadn’t called told her everything she needed to know. She was braced for the most seismic, monumental rejection of all time. “I’ll leave it for now.”

“Coward.” Julia helped put the flowers back in the buckets. “Maybe it’s time you stopped talking and moved on to the action part of the relationship.”

“That isn’t an option.” They were past that, and even if they weren’t she wouldn’t have been surprised if Izzy had installed cameras and alarms.

“Well you definitely can’t take him back to yours. Your apartment isn’t designed for passion.” Julia frowned. “I’m not sure what it is designed for.”

“It doesn’t even matter.” She cleaned the knife carefully. “It’s over.”