“It could be compensation.”
“No,” Lauren said, still smiling. “No and no and no.” How could his mother even imagine that was a possibility?
“Kenneth said he might be,” Florence murmured. “I didn’t think so, but he said mothers are often wrong about their sons, especially strong-willed mothers.”
It was clear that Kenneth had found more than one nerve.
Lauren wondered if the two of them would end up together after all.
“Then why doesn’t he get married?” Florence demanded again. “I want more grandchildren and I’m not getting any younger.”
Lauren put down the last bottle of dye. She thought about truth and Kyle’s fondness for honesty and saw the opportunity to maybe make a little difference in his life. She had no illusions that she’d hear from him again, so the only thing at risk was her tendency to fulfill people’s expectations and not say anything to challenge their views.
Maybe it was time to get over that.
She took a fortifying breath. “Maybe you can take the credit for that.”
“Excuse me?”
“How many times have you been married? And how many relationships have you been in? I’m not judging and I’m not interested in the actual number, but I know there have been a lot. Kyle said once that his parents had taught him that there was no such thing as commitment, so that makes marriage vows a lie. They’re promises that won’t be kept. He has no tolerance for lies or broken promises, so he’ll never get married. It’s pretty simple, really.”
Florence looked astonished, and then she looked annoyed. “No such thing as commitment or a promise kept? How could he think such a thing...”
Lauren interrupted her flatly. “You promised to come at midnight last night to help with the boys. You didn’t come and you didn’t call.”
“I talked to Kyle at one!”
“Because I was worried about you and insisted he call you to make sure you were okay.” Lauren raised a finger. “But Kyle knew that you wouldn’t show up and he knew you wouldn’t call. He had complete confidence that you would take care of yourself and please yourself and forget everything else.” She indicated the back of the salon. “Time for the shampoo.”
“You’re angry,” Florence noted.
“I don’t understand what happened last night. It’s thoughtless to leave people hanging. I was taught to always call and to always honor promises.”
“That’s just one incident.”
“He also told me once that he had no one to rely upon until his younger brother was born. How sad is that? A five-year-old who could only trust an infant to keep the faith?” Lauren flicked out a plastic gown with impatience, then fastened it over Florence. “I’m surprised he has any friends at all, given that experience.” She tipped Florence backward. “You’re his mother. You have to acknowledge at least some responsibility in shaping those expectations.”
“His father is no angel, either.”
Lauren laughed a little under her breath. “So, I’ve heard.”
“But you’re his friend,” Florence said with a sharp glance. “How is that?”
“Just lucky, I guess. I wouldn’t change Kyle for the world. He’s a wonderful, generous, kind, and principled man. But it’s really not fair for you to expect him to fulfill your expectations, given the past.” She forced a smile. “And that’s enough about Kyle. Let’s get this color done so you can meet Joy on time.”
She’d said more than enough, it was clear, as Florence was silent after that. Lauren could almost hear the other woman thinking. On the one hand, she felt audacious and out of line. On the other, she was glad she’d spoken up.
It felt good to tell the truth instead of saying what people expected to hear, or what she should say.
Lauren was pretty sure that Kyle would agree with that.
Twelve
Florence swept into F5 just as Kyle was preparing to leave for the day, and he halted in his tracks to stare. “Wow, Mom,” was all he could say and she spun in place, clearly proud of her new look.
Her hair was gold as well as silvery, and the color softened her usual look as much as the unexpected curl in her hair. Her hair looked loose and fluffy, soft as it hadn’t before. The cut invited a touch. She always stood straight but she looked light on her feet, filled with a happiness in her appearance that was very inviting. She still wore her black capris but her sandals were new, turquoise and strappy instead of practical. Instead of a T-shirt, she wore a blouse in turquoise that was sheer and fluttery. Instead of her usual plain earrings, she had new silver ones with crystals that sparkled.
“Lauren is amazing,” she announced, then came to kiss Kyle on the cheek. She’d even changed her perfume. This one was floral and romantic. Her eyes were sparkling with pleasure. “She does magic!”
“You look great. It’s you, but more playful.” He nodded. “It suits you.”
“I know! That’s the best part! She took me to a friend of hers who is a personal shopper, who I put in touch with my shopper in California. Together they chose some new coordinates for me. Joy’s wonderful, but it was Lauren’s idea of what to change. I love it.” Florence held out a hand, admiring the silver bracelet on her wrist, and Kyle guessed that it was new, too. “Go ahead and tell me that I look matronly.” Her eyes glinted. “I dare you to say it and mean it.”
Kyle laughed. “I wouldn’t, because you don’t.” He took his mom’s elbow, amused that he was out the door on a Friday night before Damon for once. “Come on. We’re going to be late.”
“You should marry that girl,” his mom said, much to Kyle’s surprise.
He looked down at her and she nodded.
“Lauren, not Joy. She understands you, Kyle, and that is the basis of every good relationship.”
“She’s married already.”
Florence stopped cold. “She can’t be!”
“She threw him out a couple of months ago, for screwing around on her.”
“Well, then, she’s on the market again.”
“Mom! Lauren is too smart to get involved with me.” Kyle kept his tone light. “It’s part of what I like about her.”
“Well, then, she’s not as smart as all that,” his mom countered. “She’s in love with you, regardless of what either of you believes, and that you’re friends with such a beautiful woman tells me that you’re more emotionally involved than you’d like me to think.”
Kyle spoke firmly. “Mom, I’m not getting married.”
“So Lauren told me. She even told me why.”
“What?” He halted to look at his mom.
She nodded sagely. “She’s a fine person, Kyle. Don’t let her slip away, or you’ll regret the loss for the rest of your life.”
Kyle shook his head and continued toward the street. “I’m not going to take marital advice from you, Mom.”
“You should,” she said sternly. “She’s right that you learned your aversion to commitment from me, but I’m hoping you learned something else from me, too.”
“Like what?” Kyle asked warily.
His mom’s eyes flashed. “Like the power of choice. I always told you that you could do anything if you put your mind to it.”
“That’s true.” It was true and opened a tempting possibility. “Lauren believes in forever,” Kyle found himself saying as he caught up to his mom. “I don’t.”
“And who says you can’t learn?” his mom challenged.
“I’ll only let her down.”
“You’re already letting her down if you won’t even try.”
“You’re really not in a position to give advice here, Mom.”
“I know. You might not trust me, Kyle, and that’s not insane, because I’m not very trustworthy in personal matters. I think of myself first, always have.” She shook her head. “I broke your father’s heart, Kyle, because I was so afraid he would break mine. I don’t like being vulnerable, so I fixed it.”
Kyle stared at her, because he hadn’t know
n this detail.
“It’s true.” Florence held his gaze steadily. “I thought I’d won, but in the end, I realized I’d made a terrible mistake. I still love him. It could have been forever, if I’d had the nerve to take a chance. It was spineless and stupid.”
“You could tell him.”
“With one of his little girlfriends listening in?” She shook her head. “No. It’s too late anyway.” Florence eyed Kyle. “Be smarter than me, Kyle. It even might make you happy.” She reached up and patted his cheek. “I still believe that you can do anything, with the proper motivation. Is Lauren it?”
Kyle nodded, knowing that she was.
“Then you know what to do.”
Florence smiled and marched out of F5 with her usual purpose.
“You just want grandchildren,” he called after her and she laughed just before she left the lobby.
“Guilty as charged!” she replied and then she was gone, leaving her oldest son with a lot to think about.
* * *
It was wonderful to have a girls’ night.
The best part was that Lauren and Joy picked up where they had left off.
Lauren felt good when she got home, and it wasn’t just from wine, good food and good conversation. She felt inspired. Powerful and in command of her universe. She went straight to her work table and reviewed her progress on the book box for Ty.
A combination of bookmaking, origami, sculpture and whimsy, what Ty called Lauren’s book boxes were mementos and personalized pop-up books. Some of the first ones had held gifts, but then they’d become gifts in themselves. Each one looked like a hardcover book and was of the same size. She designed them so they could be kept on a bookshelf. She built a cover, using the same techniques as bookbinders, but the cover encased a box instead of pages of paper. And when the front cover was opened, the magic began.
The first one she’d made had been a birthday card for Paige. The opening cover had lifted a cut-out of a tiered birthday cake out of the box. The candles were “lit” with clear orange film flames. They’d moved in the air, making it look more real. That one had a microchip from a novelty card that had played music. Paige had been thrilled.
The second had been a Mother’s Day card. Opening the book had tugged out an explosion of origami flowers to create a massive bouquet. Each flower had been folded out of double-sided Japanese paper and they’d been nestled together so that the bouquet was larger than seemed possible. Lauren had made all the flowers of a coordinated and brilliant mix of pinks and mauves and blues. She’d strung white beads on filament to resemble baby’s breath, and it bounced a little once the card was opened. The final touch was a fuzzy bee that looked real, its supporting wire hidden between the paper blooms. She was pretty sure her mom had shown it to everyone in greater New York.
Maybe on the eastern seaboard.
That was when Lauren had decided that she wouldn’t make duplicates of any of the boxes. She could have sold thirty like her mom’s within a day or two, but she wanted each book box to be unique.
It hadn’t been long before she began to experiment with memory boxes. The first of those had commemorated the birth of her friend’s daughter and first child. The book was pale pink, of course, since the baby was a girl, with eyelet lace on the edges of the spine. The inside cover of the box had included the birth announcement. The pop-ups included a framed baby picture along with a small cluster of flowers, some paper balloons, and a banner with the baby’s name and weight. There was a space for Joy to add a lock of Megan’s baby hair, and Lauren had put a copy of the baby’s footprints on the base of the box interior. She’d given it to Joy at Megan’s first Christmas and Joy had just told her that it still had a place of honor in Megan’s room.
Even though she’d had a lot of ideas, Lauren hadn’t done many more book boxes after Megan’s, because she’d met Mark and life had gotten busy. They took a lot of time and were labors of love as the detail was what made them magical to her.
She was glad Ty had asked her to make one for Amy. She’d put a lot of ideas to work and was proud of the result. She made one last finishing touches to the book box for Amy and hoped it would become a keepsake of Amy and Ty’s wedding day.
She’d be attending that wedding alone, and her mother wasn’t going to be pleased by that news. But Lauren wasn’t the obedient daughter anymore.
She was the one who followed her own path to find her own truth.
Lauren made a cup of tea and went back to her new work area. The conversation with Joy had made her think about using her book boxes as a kind of therapy.
She should make one to commemorate her marriage.
To capture the best bit, forever.
She’d remember the disappointment and the bad bit. She’d never forget that day in the wine bar with Kyle, and the images from the video were burned into her memory forever. But there had been good bits.
Their wedding day, for example.
Her rings were in the dish on her dresser in the bedroom, discarded after that discussion with Kyle. She didn’t really know what to do with them, and she often missed their familiar weight on her hand. Just this day, for example, she’d moved to take them off before doing Florence’s color and found one more time that they weren’t on her finger. She’d had that pulse of fear, that she’d lost them, then remembered. It happened fast, but wrenched her heart every time.
They needed a home.
She had the invitation, and some pictures, of course. What had been the best thing about her wedding day? Her sense of optimism and accomplishment. Pride and happiness. There had been doubt, too, but Lauren wasn’t interested in exploring that just yet. She wanted to relive that thrill of stepping into her future with the man she loved. The promise of it all.
She began tugging papers out of her collection, assembling a collage in the middle of her work table. It was late but she didn’t care; she was fired up with the urge to create. When her phone rang, the sound startled her. The landline was gone.
It rang again.
Her cell! She retrieved it from her purse, fully expecting that it was her mom again.
But it was Kyle.
Lauren smiled as she answered.
“You’re dangerous,” he said, his voice so low and silky that the sound gave her goose pimples.
“Me? Not a chance.”
“Oh yeah. You’re especially dangerous because you act as if you aren’t any kind of threat at all, then you get out on those rocks and start singing, and resistance is futile.”
Lauren laughed. “You and your mermaids.”
“There’s only one true siren,” he said and she felt herself blush a little.
“Don’t tell me that you were tempted to leave your island after all?”
“I am calling you from deep in the heart of the American Museum of Natural History,” he admitted. “Where I am locked in, until tomorrow morning, with about a hundred kids. They’re all on a sugar buzz and the lights are out.”
“Wow. How did you get trapped in there?”
He sighed. “I came voluntarily. I even paid for it.”
“I’m going to guess that you’re not a party of one.”
“No. The sprouts are loving it, and Dave is probably ensuring that Olivia is pretty happy, too.”
“What a nice thing to do.”
“Go figure. Even I can learn to be nice.”
“I think you are nice, but you hide it really well.”
He chuckled then. “Takes one to know one. Thanks for my mom’s makeover today. She’s thrilled.” He sighed again. “Although I do feel sorry for Kenneth.”
“Her date? Yes, she seemed to be determined to teach him a lesson.”
Kyle laughed and Lauren smiled. “Matronly was kind of a low blow. If he knows anything about women, he has to realize that’s perilous territory.”
“I thought so, too.” There was a moment of delicious silence and Lauren found herself playing with her hair, smiling, and just waiting for the sound of
Kyle’s voice again. She had it bad. She had to make sure he didn’t realize it. “So, what’s next on Kyle’s Custom Manhattan tour?”
“Trapeze class in the morning.”
“Go on!”
“I’m not kidding. I always thought it sounded awesome, and it might help with Jason’s lack of confidence with sports. Then the pizza-tasting tour of New York.”
Lauren laughed. “You’ll be hungry. They might not have one without carbs or fat.”
“I can eat pizza on special occasions.” He paused. “You should come with us, if you don’t believe me.”
“The salon’s open tomorrow,” Lauren said, caught a bit by surprise. “Saturdays are busy, especially since Marie left.”
“Of course. Any chance of your joining us for the sunset harbor cruise?”
“I don’t think that would be a smart choice, actually.”
“Why not?”
“It sounds romantic.”
“And my mother thinks I should marry you.”
Lauren’s eyes widened. “Since when do you take advice from her?”
“Never have. I’m thinking of trying something else for the first time.”
Lauren’s mouth went dry. “But, you know, I am married. Technically.”
“I remember, Lor,” he said, his voice sultry. “What’s happening with that, anyway?”
“Lawyers.”
“And you’ll be dating again, looking for forever?”
Lauren was surprised by his question. His tone was casual but he was more interested than she might have expected. “Not until Christmas. I’m taking some time for me.”
“Good plan.”
There was another heavy pause, then Lauren cleared her throat. “How are you making this super tour happen with such short notice? Everything is usually booked up this time of year.”
“Calling in favors. That’s all.”
“And you’ll be working nights to square away the debts for a few weeks,” she said before she thought the better of it.
If Kyle was surprised or insulted, he hid it well. “Actually, not. I thought about that, of course, but it hasn’t worked out that way.” He gave an elaborate sigh and just the sound made her smile. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am getting too old to get laid easily. They all want money.”
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