“It must be hard, though,” Xander said. “Not having her with you. I mean, I know it’s probably easier in some ways—”
“There was no other choice.” Calliope’s hands tightened around her glass. “She’d lost control, become chaotic. Disconnected.” She tilted her head against the back of the chair and looked at him. “Dangerous.”
“Physically? She hurt you?”
“No.” Calliope shook her head. “But I’d come in from the garden and found her yelling at Stella for no reason. She’d lost her sense of reason and in the moment who Stella was, maybe who she was herself. That was when I knew I had to make the hardest decision of my life. So now Mama lives here.”
“Calliope.” Xander wrapped a gentle hand around her arm. “I am so sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about, Xander.” She looked down at his hand as if it was a puzzle to be solved. “Everyone has their bumps in life. We aren’t special.”
All evidence to the contrary. Some people were very special. “I’d call what you’ve been through more than bumps.” He’d never understood just how lucky he’d been in his life. Suddenly the bickering over his family business seemed so petty. And yet here Calliope Jones sat, looking serene and settled as if life had never thrown anything more than a gentle breeze her way.
“Calliope?” Joshua called to her from the back door. “Stella needs you.”
“I’m coming.” Calliope pushed to her feet in a fluid movement. “We won’t stay much longer.”
“I’m not in any hurry. Take whatever time you need. Besides—” he finished his tea and set the empty glass on the table “—I’m not done with what’s left of the shed yet.”
“A man who finishes what he starts. That’s good to know, Mr. Costas.”
Xander watched her walk barefoot back into the house. Mr. Costas. There was something teasing, something familiar in the way she said his name that lightened his heart. He bent over and plucked her sandals off the grass, dangled them from his fingers like Cinderella’s lost slippers.
He set them on the chair, smiling as he accepted the fact that as long as he lived, he didn’t think he’d ever meet anyone as unique—or interesting—as Calliope Jones.
* * *
“THERE, NOW, POPPET. Dry your tears.” In the hallway upstairs, Calliope kneeled before her sister and used her sleeve to wipe away the dampness on Stella’s face. The frame she’d taken so much time to make for Emmaline had been broken into pieces. “We can fix the frame at home.”
Stella took in shuddering breaths and hiccupped, her chin wobbling. “She doesn’t know me.” She blinked and new streams of tears flooded down her cheeks. “She’s my mama and she doesn’t know me.”
“Today she doesn’t,” Calliope pushed the words beyond the lump in her throat. “But that won’t always be the case. We talked about this, Stella. This isn’t your fault.”
“She said I was evil. That I’d come to steal her soul away.”
Anger burned low in Calliope’s belly—anger she couldn’t allow to consume her. This disease was so insidious, so destructive, it attacked everyone connected to its victim. “That’s her illness talking, not Mama.” Not five minutes ago she’d told Xander that Emmaline could no longer hurt Stella. But she had. There were changes that would have to be made. “It’s okay to be angry with her, poppet. You feel whatever you need to feel. There’s no purpose in bottling it up.” She rubbed a hand over Stella’s stomach, the same spot where knots had reformed in her own belly.
“I want to go home.” The plea in Stella’s eyes struck Calliope like an arrow to the heart. “Please, can we go home? I don’t want to be here anymore.”
“Of course we can.” She looked over her sister’s head to where Hildy stood outside Emmaline’s door, her eyes glistening with tears. “How about you go outside and see how Xander is doing with the shed? As soon as he’s done, we can go home. Okay?” She stroked her hand down the side of Stella’s face. “The tears will soothe. Let them fall.”