Chapter 26
Chapter twenty-six
Juliet
Juliet didn’t wait for Lucy to reply. She certainly didn’t want to hear any of her conversation with Fiona.
And she didn’t think she could stay in this warm, lit room, with everyone smiling and laughing, for another minute.
Abruptly she turned on her heel and left the dining room, left the house.
She walked blindly down the front path and then stood in the middle of the pavement, the night dark all around her, the still air cold and damp.
She breathed in and out and tried to slow her thundering heart.
Fiona. Her mother had called, after five years—no, a lifetime—of silence. And their entire conversation had consisted of three sentences.
“Hello, Tarn House,” Juliet had announced cheerfully, still smiling at having caught Alex and Lucy kissing.
“Juliet . . . ?”
Juliet hadn’t recognized the husky yet feminine voice. It had never occurred to her that her mother would call her or reach out to her in any way.
“Yes . . . ,” she’d said, still in B she’d been so stunned to hear her mother’s voice. And then to realize that the sum total of their conversation was Fiona asking for Lucy.
“I’ll get her for you,” she said, and then hated herself for accommodating her mother in any way.
For acting like Fiona’s behavior was normal, acceptable.
Yet she’d already put the phone down and was walking towards the dining room, and in any case she had no idea what she’d say to her mother if ever given the opportunity to speak.
Why?
That, Juliet supposed, was the question that had dominated her life, the question she was both desperate to ask and determined not to. Why do you hate me? Why didn’t you want me? Why?
And now she was out here in the cold night air with that question pounding through her head and Lucy inside, talking to her mum.
“Juliet.”
She stiffened as she heard Peter’s voice, and then the steady tread of his feet until she knew he was standing right behind her. Felt his hand heavy and warm on her shoulder. He didn’t speak, and Juliet closed her eyes, tried to will away the lump in her throat.
“It was my mother on the phone,” she finally squeezed out past that lump.
She kept her eyes shut. “Fiona. She asked for Lucy. She’s never asked for me.
” And because that sounded so ridiculous and childish, she clarified, her voice little more than a whisper, “She’s never loved or even liked me.
Never even wanted me. She told me that, when I was twenty and I asked who my father was.
‘I never wanted you, Juliet.’” She stopped then, with a gasp, as if she’d been running uphill.
And maybe she had been running uphill her whole life, wanting her mother to love her.
“It shouldn’t hurt,” she said after a moment, and her voice was thankfully steadier now.
“It’s been so long, and I’ve accepted it. It shouldn’t hurt anymore.”
“But it does,” Peter said quietly, and she gave that little gasping sound again, dashing at her eyes.
“I don’t want to cry.”
“Nothing wrong with a good cry.”
“Do you know how much I’ve cried these last few months? I could create another lake. Julietmere.”
She felt rather than saw his smile, and he squeezed her shoulder. “Maybe,” he said, “you’re making up for lost time.”
She laughed shakily. “Maybe. I certainly never cried before Lucy came here.”
“I thought you might say that.”
“Oh, Peter.” It was hard to get words out again. “I wish I didn’t care. I thought if I acted like I didn’t care, I wouldn’t. But it doesn’t work that way.”
“No,” Peter agreed. “It generally doesn’t.”
“It should, though, don’t you think?”
He put his other hand on her shoulder, and then slowly turned her around. “Yes,” he said as he pulled her towards him, “it should.”
Juliet remained rigid for a moment, amazed that Peter was actually hugging her, and then overwhelmingly grateful because it felt so good.
She pressed her cheek against his chest and breathed in the scent of him: sheep and wool and old-fashioned aftershave.
She might have messed up her chance at having anything romantic with Peter, but she was glad to be his friend now.
After a long moment she reluctantly pulled away from him. “I should go inside. Clean up . . .” And talk to Lucy. Juliet didn’t want to ask her what Fiona had wanted, but she knew she probably should.
“I’ll come with you,” Peter said, and followed her back into the house.
Rachel and Alex were washing dishes in the kitchen, laughing and joking in a way Juliet certainly hadn’t seen Alex do before. Lucy was good for him. Then she heard Lucy’s voice from the utility room, a low, urgent murmur, and her stomach cramped.
Why had Fiona called after all this time? Juliet had the uneasy sense that their mother wanted something from Lucy, that the fragile relationship she and Lucy had built over the last three months was about to be tested.
She finished washing up with Rachel and Alex, and since Lucy was still on the phone, she saw them all off on her own.
“I hope everything’s all right,” Alex said with a frown, and Juliet smiled tightly in return.
“I’m sure it is.” She gave Alex an awkward pat on the shoulder. “You’ll see Lucy tomorrow at school, anyway.”
“Yes . . .” But he was still frowning, and Juliet could guess why.
Alex wasn’t the type to dive headfirst into a relationship, even if Lucy was.
He’d want things between them sorted before he saw her at school, for his sake as well as his children’s, not to mention his staff’s. Speculation would be rife.
Eventually everyone headed home; Peter offered to stay, but Juliet could see how William was flagging and she shooed him away. Then she poured herself the last of the wine and sat at the kitchen table and waited.
Finally, an hour after she’d taken the call, Lucy emerged from the utility room, her face pale, the cordless phone clutched to her chest. Juliet nodded towards it.
“It must almost be out of charge.”
“Sorry.” Lucy put the phone back on the charger.
“Well?” she finally asked when Lucy remained standing in the kitchen doorway. “What did she want?”
“Juliet . . .” Lucy gazed at her, her eyes full of anguish, and Juliet stared back stonily.
“Tell me, then.”
“She has cancer.”
Juliet blinked. “And?” she said after a brief pause.
“And?” Lucy shook her head slowly, and Juliet suppressed a stab of irritation. Clearly she was disappointing her sister with her lack of response. “And she’s having surgery the day after tomorrow. It’s breast cancer, and she’s having a double mastectomy.”
“Fine.”
“Juliet . . .”
“What do you expect, Lucy? For me to fall to pieces? I don’t have a relationship with her. You know that.”
“She’s still our mother.”
“No,” Juliet said coolly. “She’s your mother. She forfeited the right for me to call her that. I never did, actually. She wouldn’t let me.”
Lucy flinched. “Even so . . .”
“No.” The single word came out like the crack of a gunshot, and Juliet half rose from her chair, filled with a sudden, surging fury before she took a deep breath, held on to her composure, and sat back down again.
“No,” she said more calmly. “There is no ‘even so’ in this situation.” Lucy didn’t answer and she took a few steadying breaths before making herself ask, “So why did she call? Just to tell you?” Because Fiona obviously hadn’t cared whether she knew.
“No, not just that. She wants me to come home. To be there with her, during the surgery.”
Come home. Because Tarn House, and Hartley-by-the-Sea, weren’t really home, no matter what Lucy had said. “And you’re going?” Juliet asked. “Just like that?”
“I have to—”
“No, you don’t. What about your job here? What about Alex?”
Lucy bit her lip. “He’ll understand. And Maggie Bains is back. She can fill in for the rest of the term. It’s only a few more weeks. I’ll be back in January.”
“So you just drop everything the second Fiona crooks her finger?”
“She has cancer.”
“And when you’ve been in trouble, has she come running to you?” Juliet demanded.
“That . . . that shouldn’t matter.”
“No? Why not?”
Lucy lifted her chin. “Because she needs me. For once.”
“Other people need you,” Juliet pointed out. “What about Bella and Poppy? They danced out of here and now you’re going to disappear?”
“I’ll explain to Alex tomorrow. And it’s only for a few weeks. They’ll understand, Juliet. I know they will.” Her eyes flashed with temper. “You’re the one who has a problem with it.”
Yes, she did. Because it felt, reasonably or not, as if Lucy was choosing Fiona over her. “I thought,” she said coldly, “that you’d changed.”
“I thought you’d changed!”
They stared at each other, the chasm that had been bridged over these last few months opening wider than ever. “I suppose neither of us has changed as much as we thought,” Juliet finally said.
“Are you saying you wouldn’t go, if she asked you?”
Juliet let out a hard laugh. “She would never ask me.”
“But if she did—”
“The point is,” Juliet cut across her, “she wouldn’t.
And she’s only asking you because she knows you’ll come running.
You’re like a puppy, Lucy, always eager to please and so easily hurt.
Honestly. Don’t you realize how she’s using you?
As soon as she’s recovered, she’ll be grandstanding again.
She’ll turn your act of service into something to be ridiculed.
How My Daughter Tried to Win Back My Love. And you’ll just take it, again—”
“Why are you being so mean?” Lucy cried. “Or can you not stand the thought that someone needs me? That I’m important to someone?”
“You think you’re important to Fiona?”
“She needs me,” Lucy repeated stubbornly. “When has someone needed you, Juliet? When have you let yourself get close enough to someone for them to need you? You hide in your house, making breakfasts and beds for people you’ll never see again. You’ve never really tried with anyone.”
Juliet jerked back. “I tried with you,” she said, and Lucy’s face crumpled.
“Juliet. I don’t want us to be like this.”
Juliet pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. “I don’t, either.”
“Do you . . . do you not want me to come back?”
“No, I don’t want you to go.” Juliet dropped her hands from her eyes. “Look, I realize I might be overreacting a little.”
“It’s only a few weeks,” Lucy said. “I’ll be back by the first of January.”
Juliet knew Lucy believed she’d be back; the trouble was, Juliet didn’t.
Poky Hartley-by-the-Sea with its wind and rain would seem very far away once Lucy was back in Boston, with her old friends, her old life.
Maybe that jerk Thomas would get back in touch with her, ask her to babysit his kids.
Maybe Fiona would have a change of heart and throw Lucy an art exhibition herself.
Or maybe Lucy would just fall back into her old ways.
It would be all too easy for her to say she’d changed her mind and stay in Boston instead.
And if that was what happened, there wasn’t a thing Juliet could do about it.
“Fine,” she said lifelessly. “Do what you have to do.”
“I don’t want to part on bad terms—”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t give you my blessing. Not for Fiona. But I understand why you feel you need to go.”
Lucy stared at her. “Then I guess I’ll have to take that,” she said sadly.