by Olivia Miles
Kara felt her back teeth graze together. She looked down at her outfit. Navy tank top, pink cotton A-line skirt. “Yes.”
“Hmm.” Rosemary pinched her lips together.
Don’t lose your temper, Kara. Don’t even feed into it. Just pretend she didn’t say anything and move on.
“Well, I guess you’re not at the front of house anymore, so it doesn’t matter.”
Before Kara could close her mouth, which seemed to be permanently slack around Rosemary, her mother just patted her arm and smiled eagerly. “I’m just so excited for you about this promotion! I told all the gals in book club. They were certainly impressed.”
“Oh…” Kara managed a shaky laugh. “Well, why don’t we sit in the living room? You go make yourself comfortable and I’ll bring in some tea.”
From her pocket, Rosemary pulled out a plastic bag. “I brought my own.”
Of course she did, Kara thought. Because apparently her own tea wasn’t good enough.
With a smile she didn’t feel, she reached out and took the tea bag and then slipped into the kitchen, cursing silently.
Now, stop it, Kara. She is your mother. And she’s well intentioned. Just make the most of it, and in an hour, she’ll be on her way, and you can pour yourself a nice tall glass of wine.
With that promise made, Kara boiled the water for the tea while she plated the cookies and set everything on a tray, the way she’d seen Ivy do the times she went over to her friend’s place. Her stomach fluttered with nerves when she anticipated her mother’s reaction to her part in the hospital fundraiser, and she almost spilled the water in her excitement to share the news. It wasn’t often that something big happened in her world, and certainly something like this would get her mother’s mind off finding Kara a husband. After all, Rosemary was a businesswoman herself, and a successful one, too. She’d made a solid living for herself when Kara’s father had died. Maybe she’d have a few pointers to give Kara, one entrepreneur to another. Kara was eager to hear them.
“Here we—” She stopped in the entrance to the living room, the tray rattling in her hands as she watched her mother swipe a finger over the mantel, glance at it, and grimace.
She had forgotten the mantel.
One. Two. Three. Deep breaths. Maybe she’d have two glasses of wine. Yes, definitely.
“Here we go!” She cheerfully set the tray on the coffee table and settled onto the sofa next to her mother.
“Oh. This couch. I forgot how you just… sink into it.”
Kara smiled through gritted teeth as she reached for her mug. She’d brought out the best she had. The matching pair. Not the funny ones she liked to collect with various catchphrases or slogans or souvenirs of places she’d visited. But there was no credit for that.
“I like the way you sink into it. It’s comfy.” She kept her tone deliberately light.
“Hmm.” Rosemary widened her bright blue eyes. “Well, let’s just hope I can get out of it.”
Silence fell for a moment, and Kara eyed the plate of cookies. The mood was dead, but maybe this would turn things around.
“Would you like a cookie?”
Rosemary waved a hand through the air. “You know I don’t eat sweets.”
Of course. A dancer’s figure… Kara tried again. “I made them, actually.”
“Oh?” Rosemary looked at them with new interest and slid one onto her plate. “Well, in that case.”
Kara’s heart began to pound as she eyed the cookie, wondering what her mother would say and questioning her sanity for subjecting herself to potentially crushing criticism. She already knew that Grace and Ivy and Brett liked them. And Jane had mentioned something, too. And then there were the customers at the bookstore who had apparently complimented them. What more did she need?
It should be enough, but somehow it wasn’t. All her life it seemed that her mother looked at her like some kind of failure, and maybe she was. After all, she didn’t have a successful career like Grace or Luke. She didn’t own her own restaurant like Anna. She wasn’t engaged. She’d never been married. Even Jane had found love twice, and Kara was yet to find it once.
She had so little to show for herself, it seemed. But the cookies… this might just be her chance.
“Jane taught today,” Rosemary commented after she took a long sip of her tea.
Kara eyed the cookie. “Oh?”
“She’s planning her wedding. It sounds so pretty. So much pink. My favorite, you know. I kept thinking, wouldn’t it be wonderful to be able to plan a wedding?” Her gaze was steady and unnaturally long. “I know that Luke and Grace did just get married, but it was Luke’s second wedding, and as with the first, it’s really the bride’s day. A special experience for the bride and her mother to plan together.”
For the love of God. Kara thought they were past this speech. She’d heard it all through Luke’s engagement, when Grace was so indecisive about colors and flowers. It had taken everything in Rosemary not to just step in and take over. But she hadn’t. And instead she’d put it on Kara. How when it was Kara’s turn… Molly, being the youngest, didn’t have to bear that burden. And Luke, being a guy, was given a free pass. So it all fell to Kara.
“I’m very happy for Jane,” Kara said diplomatically. “After everything she’s been through the past few years, she deserves a happy ending.”
Her mother looked successfully disarmed. “Yes. Of course. Henry is such a catch. She just snatched him right up!”
If her mother was implying that Henry might have had any interest in her, Kara knew better. The man had loved Jane since he first met her. “Well, it will be a beautiful wedding. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Did you RSVP yet?”
“Yep.”
“Oh.” Kara could see it. The wheels turning. The pregnant pause. Here it came… “With a guest?”
“Nope. Just me.”
The disappointment that crossed Rosemary’s face was palpable.
Kara picked up her mug of tea. So maybe getting together with her mother once a week was pushing it. Maybe once a month would be more manageable.
She picked up a cookie and bit into it, hoping it would trigger her mother to do the same. Instead, Rosemary just said, “Is that skirt new? What size is it?”
Kara set the cookie down and turned to her mother, determined to take control of the conversation, and—though she’d promised herself this before—her life. “So, how are things going for the summer ballet gala?”
“Wonderful!” Rosemary crooned. She launched into a variety of stories from the studio, dancers who had potential, dancers who did not but thought they did, mothers who thought their daughters had more potential than they ever would, some costume ordering drama, and the fact that she was toying with getting a new piano.
“Forest Ridge Hospital’s annual benefit is in a few weeks. The proceeds are going to the oncology department this year, and so the studio is donating some lessons for the private auction.”
Kara took a breath. This was her chance. Finally her moment to show her mother that she, too, was involved in the event. That she was doing something… exciting. Something people respected and were proud of her for.
She licked her lips, considering how she’d phrase it.
“Brett mentioned it,” she began.
“Oh Brett.” Rosemary tutted. “There’s another one in our family who needs to settle down.”
Ignoring the implication that she and Brett were somehow lumped together in the family disappointment pile, Kara said, “Well, Brett’s a doctor. He’s focusing on his career right now. I don’t see anything wrong with that.”
Rosemary huffed out a sigh. “That’s just what’s wrong with your generation. You all think you have all the time in the world.”
“I’m only twenty-eight.”
“I had three children by the time I was twenty-eight,” Rosemary replied.
Kara could feel the heat rising up her neck and spreading over her cheeks. She clenched her t
eeth and willed her heart to stop racing so fast it felt like it could burst. She had heard all this, many, many times before. Why did it still upset her so much?
She turned to the subject of the book club and asked what they were reading, hoping that it wouldn’t be a love story of some kind that would launch another wave of comments about all the ways Kara was letting her mother down. Fortunately, it was an autobiography of a former First Lady.
Careful to keep the topic safe, they chatted pleasantly for the next hour until Rosemary announced she had to go. Kara eyed the uneaten cookie, feeling her spirit sink a little. She knew that if she just told her mother how much it meant, came flat out and asked her mother to please take a bite and tell her what she thought, that of course her mother would. But somehow, having to do that depressed her, and so she stayed quiet.
“Thank you so much for a lovely evening,” Rosemary said after she slipped her shoes back on.
Kara saw the warmth in her eyes and realized just how much it must have meant to her mom to have come over tonight. Maybe she’d been overly sensitive. Her mother loved her. She could see it in her eyes.
She reached in to give her mother another hug, feeling that familiar surge of guilt as she always did when the negative thoughts started mixing their way in, but the smile fell from her face when Rosemary tugged her ponytail.
“You have such pretty hair, Kara. When you let it down.”
Kara closed the door behind her mother and closed her eyes. She counted to ten before she marched into the kitchen, plucked a bottle of wine from the fridge, and pulled the cork from the top.
She could practically hear Rosemary’s tsk of disapproval when she took her first sip.
Brett watched his mother as she moved around the kitchen, stopping to lift the lid on a pot or lower the heat on the burner for another.
“What can I do to help?” he asked.
“Nothing,” she insisted yet again as she reached for one of the colanders she stored over the fridge.
Nothing. Was there anything more he hated than sitting idle?
Pushing his chair back, he stood and crossed the kitchen to retrieve the colander his mother had been straining to grasp.
“Thanks,” she said ruefully. “Now go sit and relax. You’ve been on your feet all day at the hospital.”
“I’m used to it,” he replied, staying put. “Besides, how many hours did you put in at the diner today?”
“Maybe five or six. I didn’t count.” She brushed past him to the sink and began rinsing vegetables.
Five or six was more like eight or nine. She was gone when he’d left for work, and she didn’t return until after his shift. He didn’t like it. But try telling her that.
“You should be taking it easy.”
Sharon groaned but kept her back to him. “I told you not to worry about me. I’m fine. You saw the test results.”
True, all true, but it didn’t mean he could stop worrying. She’d relapsed within five years of remission. They were coming up on another five-year mark. As a doctor, he knew the significance of this. As a survivor, she did, too.
“Besides, sitting around, watching television, reading, knitting, whatever you’re suggesting… That won’t change anything. If it’s going to come back, it’s going to come back, and I’m not going to put my life on hold waiting to see if that happens.”
He squared his jaw. “I can’t argue with that.” Much as he wished he could. He didn’t like thinking of cells doing what they would, of having no control over what would happen and what wouldn’t.
He itched to be in the hospital suddenly. To keep busy. To put his skills to use. To take measures into his own hands.
“Besides, it’s not like you’ve given me any grandchildren to keep me busy.”
Brett was almost happy for the shift in conversation. “You’ve got Mark for that.”
His mother wrinkled her nose. “Oh, I’m not so sure. Those two are too busy at the restaurant to even set a wedding date, much less start a family. You boys and your careers. Just like your father.”
“Not just like our father. Not at all like our father,” Brett struggled.
His mother turned to him in surprise, but her expression softened when she saw the steel in his eyes. “I meant that your father was passionate about his work, that’s all.”
Passionate enough to put work above all else. To put a career ahead of loved ones, ahead of family. He knew what she meant, and the truth hurt. The anger wasn’t for her; it wasn’t even for his deadbeat dad. It was for himself.
Pushing back the guilt that threatened to ruin the evening, he began setting the table. Mark was at the restaurant tonight, so it would be just the two of them. As much as he valued the time with his mother, he found himself wishing his brother could join them, just to breathe some life into the evening. Mark had a way of keeping things light. Whereas Brett… Well, he’d always been the serious one.
“So how do you like the job now that you’ve settled in?” Sharon asked as she joined him at the table.
Brett loaded his plate and wondered how to tactfully answer that question without lying. “It’s slower paced than I’m used to,” he finally said. Today he’d removed a raisin from a four-year-old boy’s nose. He’d handled bigger cases as a first-year resident.
“Well, they’re lucky to have you. And so am I.”
Brett managed to swallow the piece of roasted chicken, even though his throat had started to close up. She’d never asked him to stay, never pushed for him to be in Briar Creek even when he was needed the most, and now, now she was changing her mind it seemed. Panic flickered when he considered the reasons why. Did she know something she wasn’t sharing? About her health? Or had she wanted him back all this time but never dared to say it before? That thought was almost too much to bear. He’d convinced himself all these years that she’d wanted him to go, pursue his path. It was the only way he managed to sleep at night.
The doorbell rang, and before Sharon could even stand to answer it, his aunt Rosemary’s voice called down the hall, “Yoo-hoo! Shar-on?”
“In here!” Sharon and Brett exchanged a knowing glance before Rosemary swept into the room. “Have you eaten? I’ll fix you a plate.”
“Oh, don’t mind me. I was just on my way back from Kara’s and thought I’d stop in.”
“How’s she doing these days?” Sharon asked as she opened the cupboard and brought out another plate. “Mark gave her a promotion, I hear.”
“Hmm, yes.” Rosemary didn’t look pleased at this. Instead, she turned to Brett, giving him her full attention. “Brett, tell me, are there any single men at the hospital?”
Brett almost choked on his beer. “I haven’t really paid attention to that.”
Rosemary’s shoulders slumped. “That girl is never going to find a husband at this rate.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” Brett asked, genuinely curious.
“It wouldn’t be if she had any other direction in her life. I worry.” She shook her head and frowned down at her plate. “I really do.”
“What is it with me and worrywarts?” Sharon laughed, but her eyes crinkled when she met Brett’s gaze across the table. “Brett worries about me too much,” she explained to Rosemary.
“Well, he’s a doctor. And your son. And we all worry about you, Sharon.” Rosemary’s look was pointed.
Sharon sighed. “What will be, will be, isn’t that right?”
“Wrong,” Brett replied, setting down his fork. It wasn’t his mentality—or his business—to let nature take its course. It was his job to fight it, to do whatever it took to intervene. Anger pulsed in his jaw when he considered his mother’s attitude. She’d always been a fighter. Where was this coming from?
“I’m just saying, Brett, that there are some things in life we can’t control. That’s just a sad fact.” Her eyes held his a second longer until she blinked and looked away.
Brett stared at his plate, knowing she was right but still not wanting to a
ccept it, either.
It’s what his boss had told him that night, after the patient died. Nothing more could have been done. But he couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it.
His phone beeped in his pocket, and he pulled it out, forgetting for a moment that he wasn’t back in Baltimore, and he wasn’t even on call. He went to turn the device off, eager to tune out and unwind, when he saw the sender’s email and the subject line pop up at the top of his screen.
It was from the hospital in DC.
His heart pounded as his finger hovered over the button. One click and he would know.
“Go ahead and take it if it’s important,” his mother said. “Don’t mind me.”
He looked up at her. At the unsuspecting ease to her smile as she fell back into conversation with Rosemary, and felt his stomach ball into a tight knot.
“It’s not important,” he said, turning off the phone and sliding it back into his pocket. Not important at all.
CHAPTER
20
The hospital benefit was held each year at an old winery nestled at the top of a large hill with sweeping views of the valley. Ivy had helped with at least a dozen weddings here over the years and knew the venue well. The building was a renovated barn with huge, beamed ceilings and a wall of French doors that led out onto a stone veranda, where guests could enjoy the view. Lanterns hung from the pergola overhead, and white-painted wood furniture was clustered in small groups.
“This is a good place to serve drinks before dinner,” she said, motioning to the large space at the end, where a bar could be set up. “It’s casual, and the sun sets right over those hills there.” She pointed out to the horizon, and Brett came to stand next to her and follow her gaze.
“I suggest a few small arrangements on these end tables, and then on the bar tables if you choose to have any.”
Brett looked at her in alarm, and she couldn’t help but laugh at his bewildered expression. “You want the bar tables. Five should do.”
He grinned. “Thanks.”
They walked back through the doors and into the main room. The smell of wood was sharp, warm, and inviting, cozy enough to make Ivy imagine what it would be like to host her own wedding in this space. She’d thought of it every time she’d been to an event here. And she’d imagined Brett by her side.