Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
GRACE
At mid-morning, the chaos had died down and Grace had gone up to their room to call her mom. The background noise of a packed house had assuaged her guilt about leaving her mom on Christmas, and Grace had to resist the revolting urge to whistle when she trotted down the stairs.
Jesus. She was turning into one of those people. What was next? Forcing strangers in elevators into small talk about the weather?
She laughed to herself because she was losing her mind and she was too far gone to care. Downstairs was suspiciously quiet and empty. Everyone except for Helen, who was sitting at the kitchen counter with two steaming mugs.
Grace’s stomach clenched. In law school, she’d been subjected to the Socratic method.
An actual nightmare of having to stand up in front of everyone, answer some weird-ass hypothetical, and then defend that position while being publicly grilled by a professor who’d never practiced law in their life.
Looking at Helen, who’d obviously been waiting for her, Grace had the same feeling she did when explaining the rule against perpetuities in front of a hundred overachievers gunning for the number-one spot.
Helen looked up at her and chuckled to herself. “You already read my intentions, didn’t you? I can tell by the way all the color drained from your face.” She gestured for Grace to sit next to her, where the second mug waited. “What gave me away?”
Embarrassed that she’d telegraphed her apprehension when she was usually better at concealing her emotions, Grace shrugged.
“Oh, come on.” Helen grinned, warm and disarming. “I want to improve for when Matt finally leaves the basement and brings home a real live girl.” She laughed to herself. “I might even take a fake one at this point.”
Grace sought refuge in the coffee, but it was too hot to be long-lived.
“Alix isn’t here, so I’m guessing you asked her to run an errand or something to get her out of the house.
And you probably did that because Susan and her family stepped out — her purse isn’t by the front door.
And Matt and Mick probably drifted away for sugar-crash naps.
” She cleared her throat. “My guess is you saw a chance to speak with me alone, and you took it.”
Helen beamed. “Alix said you were smart, but—” She interrupted herself with a giggle. “Here I thought I’d only jumped the gun with the coffee. Being a lawyer teach you all that?”
Grace made a noncommittal sound in her throat. “Well, I do also have a mother who lovingly ambushes with coffee. It’s just a different kind.”
“Are you close?” Helen asked. “You and your mom?”
“Very close,” she replied. “Growing up, it was pretty much just us two, you know? I have extended family, but day-to-day, it was just us.”
“Dad?” Helen asked like she was doing her very best to tread lightly.
“Not one worth mentioning.” She ran her thumb over the mug’s handle. “They weren’t married, and he was too busy with dental school to bother with a kid. I’ve never met him, but I’ve never missed him. My mom did the work of two parents and four grandparents.”
Helen’s eyes glistened with emotion she thankfully left unspoken. Grace never understood being pitied for not having a bigger nuclear family. She’d always been a quality over quantity person.
“Alexandra and I were close when she was little,” Helen said after a long silence.
“She’d run full speed toward the car when I picked her up from school and couldn’t wait to tell me about her day.
We’d spend all summer with the horses.” By the distant tone of Helen’s voice and the expression on her face, it was obvious that she’d traveled back in time.
That she could still see that long-haired kid grinning wide.
Could still see Alexandra before she was Alix.
“And one day, I don’t know, she just stopped telling me things.
She just went away and never came back.”
Grace felt Helen’s heartbreak like paper-thin ice cracking in her own chest. It was devastatingly easy to see both sides.
To understand Alix’s claustrophobic response to a town that didn’t fit, with a mom’s simple but all-consuming love for her kid.
Helen longed for Alexandra not because she didn’t love Alix, but because she didn’t know her. Didn’t know how to relate to her.
“I’ve been having these weekly chats with a friend down at the church.” Helen’s gaze narrowed, and she added, “It’s not therapy or anything,” as if Grace might think she’d admitted to a first-degree felony. “But she’s helped me zoom out, as she calls it.”
“Sometimes the strongest tool I have in my job is being able to see the other side of the argument,” Grace said. “Once we see something one way, it’s so hard to reframe. It’s a really limiting view.”
Helen nodded without hiding her surprise that Grace was listening rather than judging. “I’m sure Alexandra has told you that I did not handle things well before she moved away,” she said, capturing a decade of heartache.
Grace looked down at her coffee. Helen’s shame was pouring from her in suffocating waves, and it was all Grace could do to not jump off her stool and crush her with a hug.
“I said so many things I wish I could take back. So many things that are so unimportant now. That weren’t worth losing so much time over.”
Reaching over, Grace clasped her hand over Helen’s.
“In my work, I’ve realized just how critical someone’s upbringing is to who they become as adults.
” She squeezed her hand and waited for Helen to look at her with regret-filled eyes before continuing.
“And I can tell you that who Alix is right now wouldn’t be possible without you.
You can love both Alexandra and Alix. That kid is still there.
She’s just more of herself. She is incredibly kind and generous and loving.
” Grace’s voice thinned until it cracked.
“I’ve never met anyone like her, but after a few days here, she makes perfect sense. ”
“Is she happy, Grace?” Helen asked after wiping her eyes. “Like really happy?”
Grace considered the question. “I think so,” she replied.
“She is incredibly successful, and she finds a lot of meaning in her work.” Grace couldn’t help a little lopsided smile.
“Even though I know she could be huge if she wanted to. Her talent is really something.” She touched the ends of her own hair with the hand that wasn’t holding Helen’s.
“She has fierce friends who love her like family. What more could she ask for?”
“And she has you.” Helen said it as a statement rather than posing a question.
Grace flushed with heat, and the nervous gurgle that bubbled up in her throat did nothing to dissipate it. “We really aren’t… I mean, I’m not really sure…”
It was Helen’s turn to pat Grace’s arm in comfort. “Aren’t lawyers supposed to be excellent liars?”
“Not unless they want to get disbarred,” Grace joked.
“Honey, it’s very clear that you and my daughter are very fond of each other.” She relaxed like she’d taken her first full exhale in years.
“Alix is an incredible person,” Grace admitted without hesitation. “But I don’t want you to think we lied about our relationship status. We were only friends when—”
“Were, huh?” Helen brightened into a supernova of love and delight.
“Well, don’t redefine anything now, because I’m out of beds.
” She chuckled. “I’m so happy you’re here, Grace.
” She slid off the stool. “I’m not sure I’d be getting to know Alix without a little moral support. ” She pulled Grace into a tight hug.
Grace squeezed her back, accepting all the things Helen wasn’t saying. The way Helen had called her Alix without skipping a beat.
“And just what is going on here?” Alix said when she walked in through the back door. She pulled off her snow-dusted hat and walked in wearing socks, her boots presumably in the mudroom. “Is this why you suddenly needed more firewood?”
Grace tried and failed not to picture Alix chopping wood. Not to imagine her like the star of a surprisingly horny Diet Coke ad from the late nineties.
“Oh, nothing.” Helen released Grace from their hug but left her hands on Grace’s upper arms. “We’re just talking about how I hope you’re married the next time you come to visit. It will really solve a lot of problems for me,” she joked before turning to the sink with her empty mug.
Alix stood frozen, gawking at her mother like she couldn’t believe what she’d just said. Like Helen couldn’t possibly have meant that she’d not just tolerate her kid’s gayness, but that she’d support a wedding.
When Alix looked at Grace, all wide eyes and shock, she posed a wordless question: What did you do?
Grace didn’t know what her expression said to Alix in return, but she hoped it said: Nothing. She really, really hoped it didn’t add: Except maybe I’m falling in love with you.