But this person wasn’t Courtney. It couldn’t be Courtney! Courtney was tall and willowy and gorgeous. The woman who stood before them was no taller than Nonnie and just as plump, although she wore a long cape, so it was hard to make out her real shape. Her hair was long, but it was dull and stringy—a dark version of Agnes Stokes’s, which had always needed washing. A flower child gone to seed. Gilly immediately pushed aside the disloyal thought.
Nonnie had sort of put her hand on the younger woman’s arm in a timid embrace, but there was a huge embroidered shoulder bag between the two of them. “This is Galadriel, Courtney.”
For a second, the smile, the one engraved on Gilly’s soul, flashed out. The teeth were perfect. She was face to face with Courtney Rutherford Hopkins. She could no longer doubt it. “Hi.” The word almost didn’t come out. She wondered what she was supposed to do. Should she try to kiss Courtney or something?
At this point Courtney hugged her, pressing the huge bag into Gilly’s chest and stomach and saying across her shoulder to Nonnie, “She’s as tall as I am,” sounding a little as though Gilly weren’t there.
“She’s a lovely girl,” said Nonnie.
“Well, of course, she is,” Courtney stepped back and smiled her gorgeous heart-shattering smile. “She’s mine, isn’t she?”
Nonnie smiled back, rather more weakly than her daughter had. “Maybe we should get your luggage.”
“I’ve got it,” said Courtney, slapping her shoulder bag. “It’s all right here.”
Nonnie looked a little as though she’d been smacked in the face. “But—” she began and stopped.
“How many clothes can you wear in two days?”
Two days? Then Courtney had come to get her after all.
“I told you on the phone that I’d come for Christmas and see for myself how the kid was doing….”
“But when I sent you the money…”
Courtney’s face was hard and set with lines between the brows. “Look. I came, didn’t I? Don’t start pushing me before I’m hardly off the plane. My god, I’ve been gone thirteen years, and you still think you can tell me what to do.” She slung the bag behind her back. “Let’s get out of here.”
Nonnie shot Gilly a look of pain. “Courtney—”
She hadn’t come because she wanted to. She’d come because Nonnie had paid her to. And she wasn’t going to stay. And she wasn’t going to take Gilly back with her. “I will always love you.” It was a lie. Gilly had thrown away her whole life for a stinking lie.
“I gotta go to the bathroom,” Gilly said to Nonnie. She prayed they wouldn’t follow her there, because the first thing she was going to do was vomit, and the second was run away.
She tried to vomit, but nothing happened. She was still shaking from the effort when she dropped her coins in the pay telephone beside the restroom and dialed. It rang four times.
“Hello.”
“Trotter, it’s me, Gilly.” God, don’t let me break down like a baby.
“Gilly, honey. Where are you?”
“Nowhere. It doesn’t matter. I’m coming home.”
She could hear Trotter’s heavy breathing at the other end of the line. “What’s the matter, baby? Your mom didn’t show?”
“No, she came.”
“Oh, my poor baby.”
Gilly was crying now. She couldn’t help herself. “Trotter, it’s all wrong. Nothing turned out the way it’s supposed to.”
“How you mean supposed to? Life ain’t supposed to be nothing, ’cept maybe tough.”
“But I always thought that when my mother came….”
“My sweet baby, ain’t no one ever told you yet? I reckon I thought you had that all figured out.”
“What?”