Play On (Play On 1)

Gwyn looked blankly at Will.

He whispered something to her and she flushed, turning to Quentin with an apologetic look. “Line?”

Our director rolled his eyes to the heavens.

Before he could feed her the line from the script book rolled in his hands, I called out, “‘You either fear his humor or my negligence, that you call in question the continuance of his love. Is he inconstant, sir, in his favors?’”

“Thanks!” Gwyn called back. “I remember now.”

Quentin shot me a thoughtful look and then swung his attention back to Gwyn. “No doubt you can guess how I feel about the fact that your understudy is feeding you your lines, Viola.”

“She has a script,” Gwyn argued.

“No,” he shook his head, “that was from memory.”

I flushed at the frown she sent my way, my eyes flickering to Pete who looked bored, and then Jack who was grinning at me like I was in trouble. Ignoring him, I concentrated on my paper.

Never feel ashamed about being smart, Nora. I should have encouraged it more. I’m sorry.

My mom’s voice echoed in my head and I looked back up at the stage. It wasn’t my fault I knew the part inside and out. I wouldn’t let Gwyn make me feel bad about it. I was over self-recrimination. Every day I had to remind myself that I wanted to be a different person from the one I was eighteen months ago.

The change had begun that fateful morning I lost what felt like everything. As I’d been overcome with the kind of pain I’d never experienced before—the agony of losing someone because they wanted to be lost—Seonaid came to my rescue. She pulled me together and told me no man was worth it. She told me it was time to take control of my life.

And her fierceness mixed with my anger at him had lit a fire inside me.

I wanted to be the strong person she swore I could be, so I’d packed some clothes in a backpack, borrowed enough money from Seonaid to get a cheap flight home to Indiana, and I’d gone in search of my parents. It all started with them and I knew if I wanted to begin my life over again, I needed closure. I needed to know I was forgiven. Or not.

I had no way of knowing if I’d ever be able to afford to come back to Edinburgh but Seonaid said she’d make it happen, that she had to because Angie and Roddy were going to kill her for putting me on a flight to the States without saying goodbye.

But she could see in my eyes how I felt.

I needed to do it then, to have something to focus on, something to get me through having my heart broken by the man I loved.

* * *

Confused, I frowned at the woman who was standing in my parents’ front doorway on West Washington. If it had been any other street in any other town, I might be forgiven for knocking on the wrong door due to jet lag and grief.

But this was Donovan and my parents’ house stood out for its smallness on the street. And there was the matter of the big-ass tree in the front yard.

The lady was perhaps in her early forties and vaguely familiar. She scowled at the sight of the bedraggled young woman on her doorstep. “Can I help you?”

“Um … I’m looking for my parents. O’Brien?”

Surprise pulled her eyebrows up toward her hairline. “You their kid who ran off?”

The joys of living in a small town. “That would be me.”

Her lip curled in a sneer. “Well, your momma doesn’t live here anymore. She lives out on Willow, east of the Northwood Farm. She built it. Called Willow House.”

Her words swirled around in my head but I didn’t get a chance to ask anything further because she’d shut the door in my face. I stumbled off the small porch and almost tripped over my own feet as I walked down the garden path. How on earth could my mother afford to build a house on land not far from our very first home? And why did the woman make it seem like my mother had done it alone?

Where was my dad?

Pulse racing harder than it already had been, I walked.

At first, I was glad for my coat because it was a chilly forty-eight degrees and there was a blustery wind trying to blow me back the way I’d come. However, after fifty minutes of marching toward Willow on the outskirts of Donovan, I was sweating. The fact that I was nervous as hell might have had something to do with it.

I was worried about missing the house if it was built off the main road, but as I walked, I saw Willow House. It was larger than the home on West Washington but still modest. Two stories and clad in white shingles, it had a porch that wrapped around the whole house and a pretty garden out front that looked like someone actually tended it.

Feeling my palms slick with cold sweat, I stopped. It was like my feet had a mind of their own and they did not want to walk up there. Pretty curtains hung in the large dual picture windows at the front, a vase of lilies and roses in one.

A newer, cherry red Jeep Renegade in the driveway at the far side of the house caught my eye. Very cute.

Very not my mother.

Definitely not my father.

What the hell?

I was jolted out of my confusion by the sound of a deep bark. The front door opened and a big black dog burst out of it, throwing open the screen door and loping toward me. Fear unstuck my feet and I stumbled back as the black Labrador came at me.

“Trixie, stop!”

The lab skidded to a halt at my feet, her tail thumping the garden path as she peered up at me with excited brown eyes.

I raised my gaze from the dog to its obvious owner.

And I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

It was my mom, but it wasn’t.

She wore skinny jeans that fit her still-slender figure and a big slouchy green sweater that was a great color on her. Her dark hair, rather than being scraped back from her face, hung in loose, attractive waves around her shoulders. And although she looked startled and wary to see me standing outside her house, the tired, pinched expression she used to wear, like they were a permanent part of her, were gone.

“Mom?”

My voice prodded her into action and slowly, as if in a daze, she made her way down the porch stairs toward me. I couldn’t read her expression, so I tensed, bracing myself for vitriol. She passed the dog and kept coming. She walked right into me, our bodies colliding as she wrapped her arms around me so tight.

Shock stunned me for a second.

My mom was hugging me.

Hugging me.

“Nora,” she whispered, sounding choked.

The fear I’d been holding onto for years shattered and I half laughed, half cried as I hugged her back.

We held each other until Trixie started to get impatient and jumped up on Mom. She laughed and let go of me. “Down, you silly girl.” She pushed the dog’s head away playfully and I studied her, thinking once again, Who is this person?

Seeing the questions written all over my face, Mom’s laughter died. “Come on inside.”

“Where’s Dad?”

Avoiding my eyes, Mom turned on her heel and walked toward the house. “Inside, Nora.”

It wasn’t until we were standing facing each other in a stylishly decorated front room I never imagined would belong to my mother, all soft grays and buttercup yellows, that I got the news I’d been dreading for the last hour.

“Your dad is gone, Nora. He passed away about nine months ago. Heart attack.”

It was too much.

It was all just too much.

“Malvolio!”

I gasped, coming out of the memory, and flushed, horrified at the thought of having been heard. But no one was watching me, and Terence, our Malvolio, was climbing over chairs to get to the stage.

“There is an aisle for a reason, you miscreant,” Quentin scowled.

“I hardly think climbing over a few chairs warrants the insult. I, sir, am no villain. Well … I am when you want me to be.” He winked at him.

Suppressing a giggle, I watched as Quentin struggled not to smile. It should be mentioned that Terence was Quentin’s lover and had been for three years. He was younger than Quentin by thirteen years and to the outside world, they seemed as different as apples and oranges. While Terence was playing the stoic, almost puritan Malvolio, in real life he was anything but. He was fun, sarcastic, a little wild, and gregarious, the opposite to Quentin who could be a wee bit uptight.

However, that was probably why they worked so well together. Terence was the light Quentin needed, and Quentin forced Terence to take life a little more seriously.