Spiral of Bliss: The Complete Boxed Set

by Nina Lane

  “Aunt Stella once said you wanted to be a fashion designer.”

  My words come out unbidden, almost as if someone else had spoken them. I tighten my fist on the brooch and look at my mother.

  She doesn’t respond right away, but the edge of her jaw tenses. “So?”

  “Is it true?”

  “I wanted a lot of things, Liv.” She puts a few earrings into a drawer and slams it shut. “Doesn’t mean I got any of them.”

  I’m struck with the urge to apologize—I know her life didn’t turn out the way she wanted because she got pregnant with me. But I can’t apologize for having been born. I have to swallow hard to push the I’m sorry back down.

  She continues putting the jewelry back in the case. “So what else has Stella said?”

  “She said my… my father regretted how things turned out.”

  The words my father sound unfamiliar in my mouth. I don’t talk about him at all. Don’t think about him. He’s a ghost, there and yet not there.

  He was in my life for seven years—long enough for memories and images to bury themselves like seeds in my mind. But they never grew because Crystal was the sun, bright, hot, blinding. Whatever memories of my father I’d wanted to cling to withered under the force of her light.

  Now, unexpectedly, they push through the dirt. There’s a man with close-cropped hair and a youthful swagger. Tall and broad, a silver chain around his neck. He smelled of sawdust and sweat. Worked as a carpenter. He died in a car accident when I was eleven.

  Crystal turns to put the bracelet away, slamming the little drawer closed.

  “Your father should have regretted a lot of things,” she says.

  “Do you?” Again, it’s like someone else is speaking.

  “Jesus, Liv.” Bitterness discolors her voice. “My whole life is a regret.”

  The next morning, after I tell Crystal about the Wonderland Café, she comes with me to see the building. I take her on a tour of the interior, telling her our plans for the lower-level Alice in Wonderland theme and the Wizard of Oz rooms upstairs.

  “When you were a kid, you used to love places like this,” she remarks, peering out the upstairs window at the view of the lake.

  For some reason, the band around my heart loosens a little at her remark. It’s an odd comfort to realize that she remembers something about me when I was a child. Maybe I hadn’t been as invisible to her as I’d so often felt.

  “Hi, Liv.” Allie’s cheerful voice precedes her entrance into the room.

  “Allie, this is my mother,” I tell her. “Crystal Winter.”

  “Oh, I didn’t know you were in town.” Allie extends a hand to my mother. “Liv showed me your commercial a while ago.”

  My heart drops. Tension rolls through Crystal, straightening her spine.

  “I didn’t even know Liv had that tape,” she remarks.

  Allie glances at me with uncertainty, appearing to sense that this is forbidden territory. “Um, it was fun to watch.”

  “I’m sure it was,” Crystal says.

  “So, Allie, isn’t Brent coming this morning?” I ask.

  “He should be here any minute,” she replies. “I’m going to finish up in the front room.”

  She gives me an apologetic glance before leaving. Crystal is still looking at me.

  “I thought I got rid of that tape years ago,” she says. “I distinctly remember throwing it away.”

  “I… I got it out of the trash.” I’d been nine years old. Crystal had gone out for a singing gig at a nightclub, and I’d rummaged through greasy TV dinner trays to retrieve the tape from the garbage.

  “Why did you do that?” she asks.

  I have no idea. I didn’t understand my mother. I just wanted something of her, even an old VHS tape of a cereal commercial. A cherub-faced blonde girl who looked so happy and seemed like she had a bright future.

  “I wanted to keep it,” I finally admit. “You can have it back, if you want.”

  “No.” Her voice is chilly. “I don’t want it.”

  A clutter of voices drifts up the staircase. I tilt my head toward the door.

  “We should probably go,” I suggest.

  “I thought you needed to work.”

  “Yeah, but you don’t want to hang around here.”

  “I can help out.” She digs into her pocket for a rubber band and starts to tie her hair up in a ponytail. “Just tell me what to do.”

  That’s a role reversal, if I’ve ever heard one. She was always the one who told me what to do. After suggesting that she help strip the wallpaper from the front room, I go back downstairs.

  I step onto the porch and call Dean on my cell. He answers before the first ring ends, but to his credit he waits for me to bring up the subject of my mother.

  “As soon as I’m done here, I’ll call around and find a place for her to stay,” I assure him.

  His breath escapes on a sigh. “Okay. You call me if you need me, right?”

  “Of course.” My stomach knots. “What time is the meeting?”

  “Three.”

  “Look, why don’t I come to the Firefly Cottage tonight?” I ask. “I know we have stuff to talk about, and I want to hear about the meeting. No one will bother us there.”

  “What time?”

  “Seven. But promise me you won’t get all blustery and caveman, okay? Just be cool.”

  “As a cucumber, baby.”

  Though he forces a light tone and I laugh, the tension between us doesn’t dissipate much. We discuss our plans for the day before I end the call, waving at Max Lyons who is crossing the street with a tray of takeout coffees.

  “Trying to stay on your daughter’s good side, huh?” I ask, holding the door open for him.

  “You got it. She’s like a piranha if you get on her bad side.” He puts the coffees on a table and looks around at the disarray of the place. “Good start.”

  “The tearing down is always easier than the putting back together,” I remark.

  He smiles. “But the putting back together is always worth it.”

  We both glance up as Allie comes downstairs with her portfolio in hand, Crystal following.

  “Liv, your mother was just telling me about her jewelry design,” Allie says, and her worried expression elicits a wave of apprehension in me.

  “I offered to help with the murals,” Crystal explains. “Allie said you weren’t sure what to do with the borders, or along the tops of the walls.”

  “Um, a few friends of mine are going to help too,” Allie says. “Don’t want there to be too many cooks or anything.”

  While I’m grateful that Allie is trying to provide me with an excuse to reject Crystal’s offer, I give her a reassuring shake of my head. It’s not Allie’s job to play referee between me and my mother.

  “That’s nice of you,” I tell Crystal. “We’d appreciate your help.”

  Allie moves to pick up one of the coffees, shooting me an encouraging, it’ll be okay smile. She introduces her father to Crystal before heading back upstairs.

  Max steps forward to shake Crystal’s hand, and I see him look at her with that purely male appreciation that she’s so accustomed to receiving. She’s beautiful with her long hair pulled back to reveal the elegant lines of her neck, wearing a soft, pastel pink T-shirt that stretches across her breasts and slender waist.

  To my shock, my reaction is visceral, as my heart kicks into gear and my stomach tenses. That look, that blatant appreciation of her beauty, was always the beginning.

  After that, the men would invite Crystal—and me, by extension—into their houses, trailers, apartments. I’d try to be invisible, try not to exist, try not to wonder how long we’d live with this man this time.

  Inevitably Crystal would go into the man’s bedroom with him, and I was alone and
anxious in another strange place, unable to avoid hearing the moans and grunting as I waited for my mother to come back out again because she was all I had.

  I turn away, grabbing a cup of coffee. I take a quick swallow, hoping the heat will burn off the anxiety icing my whole body.

  I hurry into the other room, where Brent and his friends are working. I get a wallpaper stripper and start tearing off long strips of paper. Kelsey comes in through the back door, her arms loaded with catalogs of kitchen supplies.

  “Marianne asked me to drop these off,” she tells me. “And I took out a few ads for the head chef position, so you should expect applications soon.”

  “Great, thanks.” I follow her to the front room, somehow calmer in her no-bullshit presence.

  Crystal and Max are still talking, but they break apart when I step in to introduce Kelsey to my mother. Kelsey’s eyes narrow behind her glasses, but her voice is pleasant as she and Crystal exchange greetings.

  A rush of affection for Kelsey fills me. Like Allie, she doesn’t know all the details of my relationship with Crystal or my childhood, but she knows it’s both painful and complicated. For her, that’s enough to be wary of my mother.

  “So how long are you staying?” Kelsey asks.

  “I don’t know yet.” Crystal reaches back to tighten the band around her ponytail, the movement arching her back just enough to press her breasts forward. “I just wanted to see Liv. My mother passed away recently, so I was thinking I should go to Phoenix and see about her house and belongings at some point. Sooner rather than later, I suppose, since Liv won’t let me stay with her.”

  A hundred curses race through my head and heat my blood. Somehow I manage to keep the anger from my voice as I say, “You know how small our apartment is. There isn’t room.”

  “I wasn’t complaining, Liv,” she replies. “I’m saying that if I don’t find a place to stay, I’ll have to leave. And I’d hate to do that so soon considering I just got here.”

  “I told you I’d help you pay for a hotel.”

  “I don’t want to take your money. That’s not why I came to visit you.” She looks at me with something resembling disappointment. “But never mind. I’ll figure something out.”

  She shrugs as if to say there’s no help for it. A tense silence descends. I slide my gaze to Max Lyons. He’s looking at my mother.

  Of course he is. I know exactly what happens next. He’ll come to her rescue, pained by the thought of her having to leave Mirror Lake after she just arrived to visit her daughter.

  He’ll offer her a place to stay, and she’ll be ever so grateful as she agrees to go home with him. She’ll go into his house, into his bedroom, and in exchange she’ll let him into her body, and she’ll stay with him until she gets antsy or bored or just needs a change, and then she’ll leave and find someone else.

  If it were any other man, I wouldn’t care.

  But even though I don’t know him well, Max Lyons is attached to my circle of friends, my life here in Mirror Lake, my new business, even my husband.

  I still shouldn’t care. He’s an adult who can do whatever he wants. I have no right to be angry if he hooks up with my mother.

  He begins speaking to her in a low voice. She nods, keeping a slight distance between them. She’s never been explicitly sexy, never needed low-cut blouses or tight skirts. She’s secure in her own skin, knows that she’s beautiful, knows how much men desire her. She knows how to get what she wants by giving them what they want.

  My throat aches suddenly. I see Kelsey watching Max and Crystal too. Her eyes are ice-blue behind her glasses. She turns and walks to the door.

  “Hey, Liv, get those orders in to Marianne soon, okay?” Kelsey calls over her shoulder, letting the front door slam shut behind her.

  “Crystal, we should get going,” I say, interrupting her and Max’s cozy chat. “I thought you might want to look around town for a while.”

  “Oh, sure.” She glances down at her clothes. “Can we stop at the apartment so I can change?”

  “Okay.” I grab my satchel, tightening my hand on the strap as Crystal approaches me. Tension grips my shoulders. The scent of lavender fills my nose.

  “I was just thinking it over,” I tell her. “Maybe you can stay with me for a couple of days after all.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dean

  April 2

  I BEAT UP THE HEAVY BAG at a downtown gym this morning, but I’m still mad. I don’t like Crystal Winter and never will. Not only did she fuck up Liv’s childhood, she failed in the worst possible way to protect her own daughter.

  Every time I think about it, rage heats my blood. Every time I think about the fact that she’s here, that she could potentially hurt Liv again, I want to hit something. It’s all the worse because I can’t do anything about it. Because Liv doesn’t want me to.

  I force the thought aside. Try to redirect my anger. Everything seemed almost manageable when I was working on the dig and thinking of ways to court my wife again, but now I don’t know what the hell to do.

  I’ve been banned from setting foot on the King’s University campus. I’m not even allowed to go to my office or the library. Ben Stafford, director of the university’s Office of Judicial Affairs, set up this “phase one mediation meeting” in a private room in the basement of a downtown bank.

  Feels like a goddamn prison. No windows. Fluorescent lights. Stale coffee.

  Maggie Hamilton is sitting across from me, next to her father. Edward Hamilton is a big, gray-haired man who looks like he wants to leap across the table and rip me a new one.

  Part of me wishes he’d try it so I’d have an excuse to fight back. My fists clench. Frances Hunter shoots me a warning look.

  She told me I didn’t need a lawyer yet, and Stafford advised not having one present at this stage of mediation. Though I agreed, I’ve contacted a man whose firm specializes in sexual harassment cases. Edward Hamilton is a lawyer, and he’ll know exactly how to fuck with me. I need all the defense I can get.

  After introductions and a summary of the charges, Ben Stafford starts in with questions.

  “Miss Hamilton, you say you never established a thesis proposal topic when Jeffrey Butler was your advisor?”

  Maggie shakes her head. She looks sweet and innocent in a green sweater and gold necklace, her blond hair loose around her shoulders. She hasn’t looked at me since this meeting began. Hasn’t looked at anyone, in fact.

  “That’s correct, Mr. Stafford,” she says. “I did my coursework when Professor Butler was my advisor, but he retired before I could establish a thesis topic. So when Professor West took his place, I thought it would be easy enough to get started writing my thesis.”

  “But you claim Professor West has yet to approve your proposal.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “What is the suggested topic, Miss Hamilton?”

  Maggie blushes. The girl actually blushes. Apprehension digs into my shoulders.

  “Well, Professor West suggested I write about Trotula of Salerno, who was a thirteenth-century female physician.” Maggie rubs a finger on the table. “Professor West wanted me to research medieval views of women’s sexuality.”

  Shit.

  “When I first joined the King’s faculty, you came to me with that topic,” I say, unable to prevent the angry bite in my tone. “You said you’d done some research the previous summer.”

  “My daughter said that you insisted on it,” Edward Hamilton snaps. “That you forced her to—”

  “Quiet, please, both of you,” Stafford interrupts. “Professor West, you’ll have a chance to respond when it’s your turn. Please remain quiet until I’ve finished questioning Miss Hamilton.”

  I sit back and try to inhale. My apprehension deepens.

  “So, Miss Hamilton, you claim Professor West suggested the t
opic of medieval women’s sexuality,” Stafford says.

  “Yes. I should have been suspicious, but it seemed interesting at first. Until he started suggesting that I read books about gynecology and menstruation… stuff I wasn’t comfortable discussing with a male professor.”

  “Did you tell Professor West about your reservations?”

  “No, because I was afraid he’d make me start the process all over again. Then when he suggested that he’d only approve the proposal if I… if I submitted to him…” Her voice trails off plaintively.

  The girl missed her calling. She should have been an actress.

  “How did Professor West make that implication?” Stafford asks.

  “He said that if I did what he wanted, he’d approve my proposal and we’d both be happy,” she says. “Then he tried to kiss me.”

  I can’t fucking stand this. Edward Hamilton looks like he’s about to explode. Frances puts a warning hand on my arm.

  “Professor West has suggested the opposite took place,” Stafford says. “That you, in fact, offered sexual favors in exchange for his academic support.”

  Maggie shakes her head. “No, sir.”

  Stafford glances at me. “Can you explain what happened in your view, Professor West?”

  “Miss Hamilton and I had had conflict over her proposal all summer,” I explain. “She inappropriately approached my wife and asked for her help convincing me to approve her proposal. My wife told me about the encounter, and I confronted Miss Hamilton and told her she needed to change advisors. She was upset because she said changing advisors would mean she had to take her coursework all over again, and that would delay her graduation schedule.”

  “Would it?” Stafford asks.

  “Yes, but that was her fault,” I reply. “She had no right to approach my wife. Since Miss Hamilton was placed under my advisement, she has done no valuable research and taken none of my suggestions. So when I told her to change advisors, she got upset and asked me what it would take to get her proposal approved.”