Chapter 6
The trouble with having a best friend was that they often knew you better than you knew yourself.
Rosie had told Lori she was slammed this week and too busy to have lunch, but Lori had launched a text offensive to rival a celebrity stalker, and Rosie had eventually caved.
She was happy that Lori and Gabe had made up after the disaster that had been Lori’s party, but with that over with, she had plenty of time to think about the chaos in her own life.
“I’m sorry I spent the whole time waxing lyrical about Gabe.” Lori hugged her and squeezed even tighter than usual.
The Turner family hugs could be a national treasure or an ancient curse; today, it was the latter.
Rosie was one excessively long Turner hug away from dissolving into a flood of tears, and she had to pull away, not wanting to create a spectacle in view of people she knew.
Lori had booked a table at the eighteenth-floor garden restaurant of her ex-office building for “old times’ sake.
” Lori was moving on with her life, and Rosie was supposed to be doing the same with her new job, so Lori had postulated that it’d be nice to eat at one of their old haunts.
The logic was flawed, but the view of Lake Michigan wasn’t, so Rosie had reluctantly acquiesced.
Worry flashed across Lori’s expression at her withdrawal, and she took her seat without taking her gaze off Rosie. The waiter who’d seated them confirmed their usual order, while Rosie adjusted the cutlery on her place setting to avoid eye contact.
“What’s wrong?” Lori asked.
“What makes you think something’s wrong? I told you I was busy this week. I haven’t been avoiding you.”
Lori arched her eyebrow and took Rosie’s hand.
“I know when you’re not okay, just like you do with me.
What was it you said last month? ‘The good thing about someone knowing you so well is that you can barely do anything without someone caring about it.’ And my BFF radar tells me you’re avoiding me, but I can’t figure out why. So talk to me.”
The waiter interrupted with two glasses of white wine, and Rosie took a much-needed sip.
“It’s Mom,” she said, knowing that Lori wouldn’t give this up now that she had a sense something wasn’t right.
Lori rolled her eyes then frowned. “Isn’t she a couple of months too early to begin her usual Thanksgiving drama?”
“That’s what I thought…at four a.m. on Thursday morning.”
“Four a.m.? That’s a new low, isn’t it?” Lori picked up her glass then put it back without drinking. “Wait. That was a week ago, and you’re only just telling me now.”
Rosie tsked. “I’m only telling you now because you’re forcing it out of me.”
“That’s a good thing too, because apparently, you don’t share your troubles with your best friend anymore. What’s up with that?”
Rosie smiled at the waiter after he placed their starter platter on the table and waited until he left before she answered.
“I wasn’t sharing because I love you, and you don’t need this.
You’re just re-emerging from over a year in hiding after a particularly vicious end to your marriage, and you’re only a few days into a brand-new relationship with a woman whom you may well have manifested into existence from your dreams. You should be riding the rainbow on your pink unicorn, not sharing in the atomic bomb disaster that is my mom.
” She chose a warmed tigelle and placed a piece of ham on top before taking a bite.
She let out a contented sigh, grateful that her mom’s latest drama hadn’t affected her appetite… yet.
“No. Just no.” Lori popped a cherry tomato in her mouth and shook her head.
“I’ve disappeared on you enough. I wasn’t there when you were coping with your career change, and that was bad enough.
I won’t let any new relationship get in the way of being there for you, especially when you’re dealing with your craz—with your mom. ”
Rosie chuckled. Having someone in her corner as loving and supportive as Lori had taken some getting used to after spending her life practically alone, but that unconditional compassion was also why she’d struggled so much when Lori had retreated into herself after her divorce.
“It would be nice to talk to you about it.” She filled Lori in on the early morning conversation and reeled off the cocktail of chemicals her mom might need to manage the condition, as well as the astronomical cost to get the drugs in this country.
“With the basic insurance she’s got, she can’t afford it. ”
Lori bit her bottom lip and shook her head. “She’d need to win the Powerball lotto to afford that. I hate to say it, but it seems like Mexico was her only choice.”
Rosie nodded and chewed on another piece of melt-in-the-mouth tigelle. “And I understand that, I do. But why the early morning phone call and then nothing?”
Lori’s expression made it clear that Rosie knew the answer to her own question. “That’s how she operates, isn’t it? That’s been your whole life. She has no motivation to change that behavior.”
Rosie tried to spear a tomato with her fork, but it skidded off the plate and onto the floor, before rolling under another table. She and Lori pretended not to notice. “Her behavior is the whole reason I got into counseling. I thought I might be able to help her change.”
“It was her job to help mold you to cope with the world, not the other way around,” Lori said and waved her fork at Rosie. “You told my mom that you left therapy because the people you were helping weren’t changing. Was it that? Or was it more about your mom never changing?”
“I thought I was supposed to be the therapist.” Rosie chuckled, but Lori’s question sowed a seed she knew she’d have to cultivate eventually since it was something she hadn’t thought of. “I can’t deal with that right now. Mom disappearing has me suspended in limbo.”
“Which is exactly the way your mom likes her audience—waiting with bated breath for the next act. Enter Brenda Morgan, stage left.”
Lori was right. After all the experiences Rosie had recounted to her, she didn’t need a degree in therapy to make that judgment.
“Meanwhile, I’m scurrying around trying to figure out how to come to the rescue.
Again. I can’t cover her on my insurance unless she’s considered dependent on me, which would mean having her move in and—”
“You can’t do that.” Lori practically slammed her fork down and looked at Rosie, her expression serious. “It took you too long to extricate yourself from that situation to go back now… You’re not considering it, are you?”
Rosie rubbed her forehead and blew out a long breath.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. She and Aunt Sheila are the only family I have left.
I can’t just wash my hands of her.” She paused, unsure whether she could say what she was really thinking.
But if she couldn’t tell Lori, she couldn’t tell anyone.
“You probably can’t begin to understand, but I sometimes wish that I could do exactly that and forget she even exists.
What kind of a callous monster does that make me? ”
Lori placed her hand over Rosie’s and squeezed gently.
“You’re not a monster for thinking that.
You’re human. That woman has done nothing for you except give you life, and she only did that because she wanted to escape her own mother.
” She smiled. “And they’re not the only family you have; my mom and dad adopted you years ago.
I’ve had a great childhood, yeah, but that doesn’t mean I can’t empathize with what you’re feeling.
I think that if I’d had the same experience as you, I would’ve cut my mom out of my life long ago.
Perhaps that’s easy for me to say because I’ve got great parents.
But I do understand, and please don’t ever think that you should censor or dilute your feelings for me.
I’m your best friend, Rosie. I won’t ever judge you. ”
Rosie inhaled deeply and nodded slowly. If she tried to speak now, the words would never make it out before her tears fell. And the building’s main receptionist had just come out onto the terrace and was heading toward them.
“Rosie! It’s so good to see you,” Sarah said.
She held out her arms as she walked, clearly expecting a reunion hug, which was strange since they’d shared the briefest of conversations and zero physical contact during Rosie’s three years in this building.
Rosie rose reluctantly and managed to keep the embrace short and distant.
She introduced Lori and retook her seat without extending an invitation to join them.
“Take care, Rosie. It was lovely to meet you, Lori,” Sarah said and left to join a male companion whom she greeted with an X-rated kiss.
“She seemed nice,” Lori said.
“She’s a terrible gossip. Before lunch is over, everyone in this building will have been told I’m having a secret affair with a married woman.”
Lori laughed. “Why would she think I’m married?”
Rosie tapped Lori’s naked ring finger. “Tan line.”
“Ah…” Lori clasped her right hand over her left to cover it. “I’ll be more discreet and wear makeup next time,” she said and winked. “Anyway, back to family stuff. Has your mom been in touch with her sister?”
“Aunt Sheila said she hasn’t heard from Mom since Thursday, like me, though her phone call was at a more reasonable time of day, and Mom didn’t say anything about kidney disease or medication.”
“What did she tell her?”
“That she was going to Mexico to get married to Keith.”
“Isn’t she still married to the last guy?” Lori asked.
“That’s what Aunt Sheila asked too. Mom said that one didn’t count because it was in Canada.”
Lori spluttered her wine back into her glass. “Does she really believe that?”
“God knows, but—”
“Now you don’t know which story is true.”
Rosie tapped her nose. “Exactly. With my mom, it could be both, and I can’t ask to find out because her phone is switched off and goes directly to a recorded message.”