by Bella Andre
Still beyond stunned by the fact that her mother was even here, Rosa nearly couldn’t wrap her head around what she’d just said. “He called you?” She turned to look at Drake’s father in confusion. “But I only just met you tonight.”
“Please don’t be angry with him,” her mother begged. “He heard me say on the radio this morning how scared I was that something might have happened to you. And when his son Drake told him you were here together earlier today, he couldn’t stop imagining how he would feel in my shoes.”
“As a parent, I had to track down your mother’s number,” William said in his deep voice, “to let her know not only that you were okay, but also that my son was looking out for you.”
“Calling was William’s idea,” her mother agreed, “but coming here tonight was mine. I needed to see you, honey, needed to know for sure that you’re all right.”
The beginning of the day, when Rosa had been surprised in Montauk by a stranger carrying a pie, seemed like a million years ago. “I was going to ask you to come tomorrow. I just needed some time first.”
“We’ve always done everything together.” Her mother gripped her hands. “Why did you feel you had to run away? Why didn’t you trust your family to be there for you? Why didn’t you trust me with what you were feeling?” Before Rosa could answer, her mother said, “I never pushed you into anything you didn’t want to do, did I? I always tried to be so careful not to be one of those awful momagers. I thought you were enjoying it all. Weren’t you?”
“You know I was. At first, anyway.” But Rosa pulled her hands away, needing some distance again so she could say, “It’s just that sometimes it was hard having our family life and business all bound up together. Especially when I felt like I couldn’t talk to you about anything outside of the show. I kept waiting for the cameras to go off, but they never did. Not after the show got so big, and we were always either filming or doing photo shoots and interviews. Not even the day we found out about the pictures of me. The cameras were rolling even then.” She took a deep breath before saying, “I miss you, Mom. Miss you just being my mom instead of my co-star or manager or whatever we became.”
“But I’ve been right here, honey. Right here as your mother, no matter what else is going on.”
“No, you haven’t.” Rosa hated to hurt her mom, but she wasn’t going to run from speaking the truth this time. Not when she’d finally learned that running didn’t make things any easier or better. For the first time in a long time, she was going to deal with her problems—and her fears—head on. “I needed my mom when the pictures hit. But I got a PR spin doctor instead. It’s like you completely forgot why we signed on for the show in the first place—to save our family, not to tear us apart.”
“How can you say that?” Rosa had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from taking it back as her mother’s face crumpled again. “I was devastated. Absolutely devastated by what that awful man did to you.”
“You told me it was nothing people hadn’t seen a million times before.”
“I swear, Rosa, I said that to try to help.”
“How on earth could you possibly think saying that would help me?” Rosa’s question was loud enough—and so forceful—that it reverberated off the vaulted ceilings in the huge living room.
Her mother didn’t start crying again, just blindly reached for a couch behind her and collapsed on it. That was when Rosa finally realized how different her mother looked. Where Isobel Bouchard usually never left the house without perfect makeup, hair, and clothes—even before they’d signed on for the TV show, she’d always believed in taking special care with her appearance—tonight she seemed to have forgotten that any of those things mattered at all.
Rosa also realized that at some point, Drake and his father must have left the room. Oscar had stayed behind, still right there at her side.
“Ever since the day you were born, my biggest fear has been that someone would hurt you.” Her mother’s words were so soft that Rosa had to move closer to catch them. “When your dad died, that fear magnified a thousand times because you only had me to keep you safe. So when we found out about the pictures...” Her mother wiped away the tears that had started falling again. “I knew I had failed. Failed in the worst way a mother can fail her daughter.” Her face was ravaged with guilt as she said, “The last thing I wanted was for you to feel like those photos diminished you in any way. All I could think was that you needed to know that you are so much stronger, so much better, than anyone who would ever try to harm you like that. And that you don’t have one single thing to be ashamed of, honey.”
Rosa dropped to her knees on the rug in front of her mom. “Why didn’t you just say that to me?”
“Because the whole thing is my fault. You have nothing whatsoever to be ashamed of, but I do.”
“You don’t.”
“I do. If we hadn’t signed on to do the show, if we hadn’t become famous, then you would be just another normal young woman.”
But Rosa had done enough research by now to know that the same kinds of violations happened to normal women every day.
Only, before she could say as much, Isobel said, “I can see now that I left you no choice but to disappear the way you did. Will you let me apologize?” Rosa was overwhelmed by the raw emotion in her mother’s voice. “Will you give me a chance to make things right between us again? Even if I don’t deserve it?”
“Mom.” She took her mother’s hands in hers and found them so cold that she instinctively began to rub them. “The last thing I want is to lose you. To lose our family.”
“That will never happen. The four of us made it through after your father passed away, and I promise you that no matter what happens now, I’m going to fight whatever battles I need to fight to make sure we keep sticking together. Through thick and thin.” Her mother’s voice cracked on thin. “I can see now that I was wrong, so terribly wrong, for the things I said to you. I should have been there for you above and beyond anything else. I shouldn’t have made you think for even a single second that the show, or business, was more important to me than you. I’ll never be able to forgive myself.”
But Rosa now knew exactly what happened when a mother or a father couldn’t forgive themselves. She’d just witnessed it with Drake and his father. Knew how bad it was when families broke apart and stayed apart.
“I’m not going to lie to you and say it doesn’t still hurt,” she told her mother. “Because it does. But you weren’t the only one whose head was turned by the spotlights and the money and the fame.”
“That doesn’t excuse what I’ve done.”
“If we were laying out excuses, Mom, I’d have more than my fair share. But we can’t go back and change who we were or what we did. We can only change who we want to be now and in the future.” Still holding her mother’s hands, Rosa moved from the floor to sit beside her on the couch and took a deep breath before saying, “I don’t want to do the show anymore.”
Her mother was silent for a long moment. Finally, she nodded and said, in a very soft voice, “I can’t say I’m happy to hear that when I know the show will be canceled without you. But I do understand why you wouldn’t want to do it anymore after everything that’s happened.”
“It’s not just the show. And it’s not just because of the pictures either. It’s that I’ve finally realized I don’t want to be in the business at all. I’ve actually been thinking about spending more time”—she felt nervous telling anyone her budding plans, even her mom—“on my embroidered canvases.” She remembered how bowled over the women in the yarn store had been and made herself amend it to, “My art.”
“I’ve always told you how talented you are, honey. But you were so shy about ever sharing your talent with anyone else.”
“I still am,” she admitted, “but this week showed me that I’m strong enough to survive anything that comes. Even people hating what I create, whether it’s a TV show or a canvas covered in silk thread.”
“Not just survive, honey. You’ll thrive the way you always have in the face of a challenge.”
“You’re the one who taught me how to do that. How to be strong. How to be confident.” Rosa’s throat tightened again. “How to love.”
Her mother’s mouth finally shifted into a small smile. “The man you walked in with—is that Drake?”
Rosa smiled too and felt joy all the way down to her toes just from thinking about him. “I love him.” Oscar nudged her hand so that the fur on his head was easy to stroke. “I love you too, Oscar.”
“I’m so happy for you, honey. If Drake is anything like his father, you’ve found a good one.”
Rosa’s eyebrows went up. She hadn’t seen her mother express interest in a man in a very long time.
“I never thought I’d find a man like him,” Rosa said. “As good on the inside as Dad was. The day I left Miami, he found me in the middle of a rainstorm and brought me in out of the cold.”
“You just met him this week? I assumed you’d met him before at some event.”
“There’s so much I want to tell you, Mom. And I promise I will. I want you two to spend time getting to know each other. But right now I need you to know that I’ve decided I want to do what you said in that email. I want to turn something terrible into something amazing.”
“If anyone can, it’s you.”
“I wish I could have figured some of these things out without naked pictures of me floating all over the Internet.” Rosa let the now-familiar anger rise within her, before deliberately releasing it. “I refuse to say that there are any silver linings here, but if people all over the world are waiting for what I’m going to say, I’m going to make sure they hear it. Loud and clear. I want to help make a difference, any way I can.”
And as she explained her plans for the two-hour special, and they brainstormed ways to make it even more powerful, the invincible mother-and-daughter team that they had once been finally began to grow strong again.
Chapter Thirty-One
Drake had wanted to stay in the living room with Rosa to make sure her mother didn’t step out of line, but William had insisted, “They need time to work things out alone.”
During the past hour, Rosa and her mother had been loud enough for Drake and his father to hear them through the walls of the study more than once. Though he hadn’t been able to make out their exact words, Drake could tell how upset Rosa was.
He’d gotten up and headed for the door, intent on charging back into the living room. But his father had blocked the door, saying, “I know you want to help, but this isn’t the way to do it.”
“She’s been hurt enough already.” And Drake would do anything it took, would go to the ends of the earth, to keep Rosa safe. Even from her own mother, if need be. “I won’t let it happen again.”
“Neither will Rosa.”
Though he’d had to force himself to stop and take a deep breath, Drake knew his father was right. He didn’t need to rush into the living room to save her.
Because Rosa could save herself.
So he stayed with his father and made himself ask, “Why?”
William held his gaze. “Which why do you want first?”
They’d made a beginning at dinner. But now, Drake wanted to understand what he’d seen tonight in the cottage. “Why have you been collecting my paintings?”
Surprise registered for a moment in his father’s eyes. “You went to the cottage tonight?”
Drake nodded. “You never once let on that you were buying my work.”
“I didn’t want you to think I was hovering over you all the time, but I still couldn’t resist buying a painting at your first show. Anonymously, of course. Each time you had another show, I would tell myself to let you be...but you’re my son. And your art felt like my only lifeline to you. The only way I could follow your growth. The only way I could get inside your head, your heart.”
“I had no new paintings of yours to follow,” Drake pointed out. “No way to get inside your head or heart.”
Grief washed across his father’s features. “I couldn’t paint anymore. I just couldn’t. Couldn’t really do much of anything for a long time. Not until Jean and Henry asked me to work on building houses here with them.”
Drake thought of Rosa’s insight about his father likely needing to make that change in order to move forward. “Does building give you the same satisfaction painting did?”
“Painting wasn’t always healthy for me. Even before your mother, the truth I didn’t want to admit is that I was driven more by pressure than inspiration. More by competition than enthusiasm. When people said I was good, I felt that I needed to be great. Until great wasn’t enough anymore, and I had to be the best. And then when I met Lynn, that urgency spun into obsession. You’re right that building isn’t the same as painting. But for me, it turns out that’s not a bad thing.”
Drake silently processed his father’s revelations. So many things had fallen between the cracks during the past thirty years, too many to deal with in one night. But at least they were making a start.
He hoped like hell that Rosa and Isobel were too.
There was one more thing that Drake needed to know for sure tonight. “It was worth it, wasn’t it? To be with Mom, even if a part of you knew that it might not be forever?”
“I would do it all again, just to have the four of you. And I promise you I would also try to do it better. So much better.”
After the decades-wide chasm between them, of course it was good to hear that. But though Drake believed his father, he wanted to know what was in his heart, not as a father, but as a man who had once loved a woman beyond all reason.
“And if we’d never been born? If those years with her were all you’d ever have?”
“One second, one hour, one day, one year.” His father’s words were raw with unguarded emotion. “Any amount of time loving Lynn was worth all the pain that came afterward.”
Before Rosa, Drake could never have understood. Now, nothing had ever made so much sense.
“I’d like to donate the paintings you’re going to give me to a few museums.”
The Met in New York City, of course, but also the small museum here in Summer Lake, along with the De Young in San Francisco, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Center for Maine Contemporary Art. One in each city where Sullivans lived.
“All but the painting where she’s holding me as a baby.” Drake would forever prize that one.
“Your mother asked me to paint it for you.” His father’s voice was hollowed out by the memory. “She said she wanted to make sure you could always look at that painting and remember how much she loved you.”
“Almost as if she knew she was going to leave.”
His father didn’t look away. Didn’t deny it either. “I know we can’t fix everything tonight, but I’m damned glad you’re here, Drake.”
“I am too.”
By the time they headed back into the living room, the two women’s heads were bowed together, and it looked like they were taking notes on a cell phone.
Oscar saw the men first, and when the dog caught Rosa’s attention by lifting his head from her lap, the smile she gave Drake nearly blinded him in its beauty. They’d been apart only an hour, but he crossed the room with eyes only for her, breathing her in like oxygen when she met him halfway.
He brushed his fingertips over the dried tear tracks on her cheeks. “You’re okay.”
He didn’t say it as a question. Despite the smudges of exhaustion under her eyes, he could see not only that she was okay, but also that finally talking with her mother had lifted a big part of the load she’d been carrying.
“I am.” She put her hands on his chest, and he could feel his heart beating against her palms as she looked deep into his eyes. “So are y—” She lost the battle with a yawn. “You.”
He kissed her again, then said, “Time for bed.”
His father obviously had the same idea as he held out a hand to hel
p Rosa’s mother to her feet. “I’m going to show Isobel to the guest room.”
Isobel smiled at William and said something to him in a low voice before moving toward Drake and Rosa. “Thank you, Drake.” Her words were thick with emotion. “Thank you for being there for my daughter when I wasn’t.”
Drake was still wading through his impressions about Rosa’s mother, and despite the fact that she was saying all the right things now, he wanted to get to know her better before he made up his mind. Tonight, however, one thing was perfectly clear: Isobel Bouchard loved her daughter.
Love, he knew, didn’t mean you always made the right choices. Fortunately, it did go a long way toward making forgiveness—and new beginnings—possible.
“I’m glad you’re here so that you can both have a chance to talk some things through.”
Rosa’s mother clearly understood that he would protect her daughter against any and all threats, even her. Just as he was taking the measure of her, he could see that she was doing the same with him.
“Whatever happens in the future,” she told Drake as she pressed a kiss to Rosa’s forehead, “I will be forever in your debt.”
Rosa’s eyes were nearly closed by the time they made it up the stairs and down the hall to their bedroom. “Did you ask your father about why he bought your paintings?”
“We talked and it was good.” He watched her barely smother another yawn. “Looks like you and your mom worked through some things too.”
“We did.” She yawned again. “I want to tell you everything, want to hear more about what your dad said.”
He wanted to hear the same from her, but sleep was more important right now. “Lie with me awhile first.” He quickly stripped her clothes away, then laid her beneath the thick covers on the bed. Moments later, his own clothes were off, and he was sliding in beside her, pulling her into his arms.
By the time she curled up against him, her breathing was soft and even. Though Drake badly needed sleep as well, he needed this more. Needed to have Rosa warm and safe in his arms. Needed to feel her heart beating against his. Needed to breathe in her sweet scent.