Chapter 58 Gigi
“What do you mean the engagement is off?” Gigi shrieked when Eloise delivered the news that evening.
Gigi couldn’t accept it. She wouldn’t.
Dinner simmered on the stove. Pluto was lurking, eyes peeled for scraps. Outside, a summer thunderstorm brewed, thunder clapping.
Gigi had been caught out in the rain while on a trail ride with Noelle. Her breeches were splattered with mud; she’d been
planning to shower before dinner. Those plans were now derailed, along with everything else.
“You can’t just end things because you’re scared,” Gigi said.
This was her mother’s fault. Just when she’d thought Eloise had actually changed for the better... here she was, back to
her risk-averse, self-sabotaging habits.
“It’s not because I’m scared.”
Eloise added homegrown basil to the marinara sauce, carrying on as if nothing was wrong, nothing was broken. When that was
all it was—wrong and broken and terrible.
“It’s because I know what I want, and it’s being on Mackinac year-round with you and Nonni,” Eloise went on.
The way Eloise said Nonni’s name was tense. Gigi knew something was going on between them but wasn’t privy to the details.
She figured Nonni might be encouraging Eloise to go to Scotland, to take the risk, and her mother was resisting.
“I might not even be here,” Gigi said. “If I lose the election, I’ll be on the first ferry out.”
Gigi wasn’t sure if she meant it, but she liked having the option. There were a lot of moving variables right now, but her
mother’s broken engagement was not supposed to be one of them.
“You’re going to win,” Eloise said. “But either way, I want to be closer to Rebecca. I can’t be a good daughter or a good
mother from Scotland. It’s absurd.”
“Rebecca and I are grown women,” Gigi said. “And Nonni wouldn’t want you giving this up because of her.”
“I’m doing it for me. Why does everyone have such a hard time accepting that?”
Gigi held the image of Eloise and Clyde dancing at the engagement party. She refused to drop it. “Because we know how you
feel about Clyde. It’s meant to be.”
“I love him,” Eloise said simply. “But I love other things more. Other people more.” She looked pointedly at Gigi.
Gigi felt the pressure behind her tear ducts, the tingling in her nose. “You’re quitting,” she accused. “You’re quitting on
him and you’re quitting on yourself.”
“This isn’t your breakup, Georgiana,” Eloise said. “It’s mine.”
Gigi had the sensation that her mother was stealing something that wasn’t Gigi’s to lose. But the loss still came.
“You’re right,” Gigi said. “It’s not my breakup; I was just the one to set you two up. I was just starting to think I’d get
to have Clyde in my life as a man I could count on to be there for me because my own dad isn’t.”
Gigi was getting hysterical and she didn’t care. It felt like the rug had been ripped out from under her own happily-ever-after.
“Your father loves you very much. He’ll always be there if you really need him.”
“Just like he’s always been there for you?”
Perhaps Gigi would have had more sympathy if her mother were sobbing or yelling or showing any evidence of distress at all. Instead, she spoke of the broken engagement so calmly, so candidly.
The emotion was falling entirely on Gigi to express. And express it she did, kicking the refrigerator so hard that she might
need James to x-ray her toes later.
“I thought I’d fixed it,” Gigi said. “I had fixed it. I found the perfect guy for you. He’s obsessed with you, asked you to marry him, and now you’re throwing it all
away.”
Eloise turned off the stove, strained the pasta over the sink. “I’ll forever be grateful for meeting him. He showed me I can
love again.”
“And that you can lose again, apparently,” Gigi added.
Eloise wiped Gigi’s snot with the sleeve of her own cardigan. “It’ll be okay. I promise.”
“That’s what you said when Dad left.” Gigi remembered those nights so clearly. Her eight-year-old self climbing in bed with
her mother because neither of them could sleep. Hiccupping and coughing and spitting—anything but breathing. Eloise patting
her back, telling her to picture a water wheel moving in a smooth, circular motion, the breath moving over the top of the
wheel, water splashing on the way down, then a pause at the bottom of the wheel for the exhale. “ Everything will be okay ,” Eloise had said so many times.
“And I was right about that, wasn’t I?” Eloise said now.
“Love is a hoax,” Gigi said. “One giant hoax.” The lie of it and the truth of it entangled like vines, strangling the tree
she had just started to trust.
“It’s not a hoax.” Eloise fixed their bowls of pasta. “And you want to know the very best thing to come from all of this?”
“I don’t care.”
But Eloise carried on anyway. “The best thing is that I have a daughter who loves me so much that she would try to find someone
for me.” It was the first time she looked close to crying.
“I only set you up with Clyde as payback,” Gigi said. “There was no good intent in it at all.”
No matter what Eloise would say, Gigi was determined to disagree. She wanted to reinstate every inch of the distance between them that they’d begun closing this summer.
“Maybe that was true at the start,” Eloise said. “But I saw how you made an effort with him, how you were rooting for us.
I know it wasn’t easy, especially with everything with your dad, but you put me first—you did.”
“No, I put myself first. I didn’t just want Clyde for you. I wanted him for me too.”
She thought about how comfortable she’d gotten with going over to the Grand Hotel, using the facilities and charging smoothies
and fries to Clyde’s tab. It wasn’t about the money or the luxury. It was about the feeling of having something that was always
open.
But now here it was, closed again.
“I’m sorry.” Eloise’s seafoam eyes were squinting. “Georgiana, I’m so sorry. I just can’t go through with it.”
Outside, lightning flashed. Thunder trailed. Gigi suddenly felt very tired. “Okay. I hope you don’t regret it.”
“Please shower before you sit down at the table,” Eloise said. “You’re covered in mud.”
“Of all the things to worry about, mud on the chairs is really at the top of your list?”
“If we stop caring about the little things, we stop caring about the big things too.” Eloise’s shoulders were held high and
straight, like she knew that if she let them drop even a notch, they would fall all the way down.
“Fine.” Gigi loped off to shower, glad for a reason to wet her face so her tears would blend in better.