Eight
After Sebastian left, after refunds were issued, after she’d licked the wounds of Harper’s easy fondness toward him, London stood in the opening between the sitting room and dining room and watched Harper work.
There was something irritating about her calm.
The methodical way she moved. How she pulled the tape measure out, let it recoil with the zzzzz of metal against metal.
The way each new piece of flooring received exactly three taps into place.
She moved as if this were just another job, not the house where they'd argued about minutiae and promised forever.
“You don’t have to hover,” Harper said, tape measure outstretched.
“I’m not.”
“You are.”
London crossed her arms. She hadn’t meant to hover. She’d meant to be useful. To grab tools. To ask smart, logistical questions. She hadn’t done any of that, and Harper didn’t need those things anyway.
“I’m going to run to Seattle for a few days, okay?” London leaned against the cased opening that separated them. “I need to check on Mum and grab some clothes. You need anything?”
Harper shook her head. “Nope. All good. I’ve got some help coming later today to help bang this floor out and then I’ll start building kitchen cabinets. Best to be out of the way, anyway.”
The words landed like dismissal from the school principal. It’s not like she knew how to build things, but she could assist. Not asking who was coming took next level restraint.
“Right,” London said. “I’ll be back Wednesday. Thursday, latest. Here’s my credit card, if you need supplies.”
“Thanks.” Harper didn't break her stride. Two days of laying flooring and she spoke only in absolutes—measurements, materials, what needed doing next. “Say hi to Lorraine for me. I hope she’s doing okay.”
“I will.”
Harper tapped the next board into place. One. Two. Three.
London waited for something more, something deeper.
Harper and her mom had always gotten along, often ganging up together to get her to loosen her grip on things that didn’t need strangling.
Lorraine used to say London was born forty, and Harper helped her look beyond never-ending adult responsibilities.
She'd hoped for something more as she left—anything more—but nothing came, so London grabbed her coat off the hook behind the door and shrugged it on.
Behind the wheel, sunlight hit her eyes with ferocity.
She hadn’t seen the sun in weeks, and it bounced off the snow in punishing flashes, making everything so much brighter.
Where were her sunglasses? London sat idle in front of the inn and dug through the center console, pulling out half eaten protein bars and three different charging cables. No glasses.
She leaned across the passenger seat and flipped open the glove box, full of paper and old car registration slips. Not there.
London had accepted this Washington reality long ago: you lost sunglasses regularly because you rarely needed them.
She’d grab a new pair at the gas station halfway.
When she fired up the Subaru, the radio was tuned to a country station, local to Wenatchee.
Miranda Lambert was mid-verse singing about a house that built her.
London let it play as she pulled onto Division Street and headed west, snowcapped Icicle Ridge rising majestically in her view.
It filled the windshield with its breadth.
The route over US Highway 2 was stunning in fall, with its yellows and oranges and tourist pullouts, packed with SUVs and photo-takers.
In winter, it was stripped down. Rocks. Trees. Water.
The Icicle River ran fast beside her, still angry and swollen, throwing itself over boulders and log jams. London adjusted her grip on the steering wheel.
Miranda belted about touching the place that made her, about fixing the brokenness inside. London reached for the volume knob.
And lost the signal.
The canyon narrowed. Granite rose on her right, packed tight with frosted trees for a while, and then, with burned forest on the left, remnants of the previous year’s wildfire season.
This was the section her father used to narrate, explaining how the river had carved the rock, how even something as strong as granite could be molded by consistent pressure over time.
Pressure over time.
Or stubbornness, by another name.
She believed that—and built her life around it. London fought for what she wanted.
The Subaru curved with the road, tires humming over rough pavement.
The volume of snow the Cascades received each year wasn’t kind to asphalt.
Snow clung to road signs, the sign denoting it would be 92 more miles to Seattle almost completely obstructed.
She didn’t need a sign to tell her it was 92 miles.
This drive was part of her, entrenched in her memory.
London checked the rearview. Nothing but sunshine and mountains. For now, it was enough. She let them hold her.
# # #
"Hi, Mum!" London slid beside Lorraine on the oversized couch, brightness forced into her voice. “What’cha watching?”
The TV room at the memory care facility was clean and cozy. She noticed how quiet it felt, with rugs and drapes and soft furniture to absorb the sound. A far cry from the hollow shell she’d been living in at the inn.
“Oh, darling, so good to see you.” Lorraine tucked into her daughter’s hug. A pale cardigan hung from her shoulders. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”
“Just missing you.” London smiled.
“You’ve got here just in time. I bribed the programming boy to play BritBox. It’s a murder mystery marathon today.”
Lorraine was always chipper, even in the depths of her memory failing her body. She was particularly sparky that day.
“Sneaky. Good for you. How are you today? Is everyone here behaving?”
“Good as I can be for being in this cheery little oubliette,” Lorraine said.
London made a mental note to look up oubliette later.
“We had Salisbury steak for lunch, though I suspect it was merely ground beef with ambition. Why are you here in December? Aren’t you run off your feet?” Her mother left England fifty years ago but hadn’t let go of her colloquialisms.
An aide pushed a man in a wheelchair in front of them, then parked him beside Lorraine. Behind them, people played cards, and someone must have just won big because there was a lot of clapping and “She cheated!” being proclaimed.
London was still thinking about ground beef with ambition. That was on brand. “The inn flooded in the storm a couple weeks ago. We don’t have guests right now. I’m fixing it.”
“Right shame. Sorry, love. That place was always more trouble than it was worth.” Lorraine reached for her daughter’s hand. “Frederick gave so much for that place, but I always hated it.”
Newsflash.
“What do you mean?”
“Money pit, I always thought. And having strangers in and out of our home. And that ridiculous town on its high horse. It’s not Bavaria! It’s a logging town in Washington, the coldest, darkest place in the United States, except I guess Alaska, but I never went there.”
Lorraine hadn’t said this much, this lucidly, in months. Years, maybe. As far as London knew, she still thought George Bush was president—the second one—and her father was on an errand.
“You hated the inn? Why did you live your whole life there?” London squeezed her mother’s hand. The same hands that used to fold napkins into swans with miliary precision for guests.
“Because I loved your father, darling. He couldn’t get a visa to stay in England, and I’d rather be in a small town in the sticks with him than anywhere without him. So, when he asked me to come to Leavenworth, I said yes and made it work.”
Holy shit.
One person pushing. One person following.
“I had no idea. I just assumed you wanted to move there.” London would need some time with that one.
Lorraine had already moved on. “So has she forgiven you yet?”
“Hmm?”
“Your wife. Has she forgiven you?”
A week ago, she was on holiday in the Cotswolds and Harper’s name was Parker. Today, she was spilling secrets and asking questions London didn’t know she even knew to ask.
“Forgiven me for what, Mum? We’re getting divorced.”
“Yahtzee!” someone yelled in the background. A faint hint of bleach and lavender wafted by.
“Yes, I know dear. But you don’t have to be. You’ve built a life together. Starting over at your age is a fool’s errand,” Lorraine said. “You need to apologize. Really apologize. Show her you love her. She’ll stay.”
What the hell?
London wished she could bottle this version of her mom. Wished she could press a button and call this woman from her youth. The mother who knew where she was. Who remembered. Who saw things—and only said them when they mattered.
“I don’t think so, Mum. Harper’s moved on. I’m trying to. I don’t think she’ll stay, no matter what I do.”
“You don’t always have to win, darling,” Lorraine looked toward the window. “Sometimes you can just love.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Oh my, look at that! Isn’t that Cornwall out the window? We took you there once, when you were very young, with my father. It’s barely changed.”
There went that.
“It’s lovely,” London agreed, and noticed the TV was playing an old black and white movie. They probably didn’t even get BritBox.
Lorraine’s attention shifted to the television, eyes following the black and white figures crossing a windswept moor that definitely wasn’t Cornwall.
London followed her longstanding rule and didn’t correct her. She kept hold of her mother’s hand. Her skin was thinner than it used to be. Papery.
As Lorraine escaped to wherever she was, her words replayed in London’s mind.
You don’t always have to win.
Quieter now, but still as deep.
She’d lived a life built around winning.
“Lovely, isn’t it?” Lorraine said to no one, shifting deeper into the couch.
“It is,” London replied. “It is.”
# # #
Laurie chose a restaurant on Capitol Hill that required parallel parking and patience.