Chapter One
Mila
Ten Years Later
“I scheduled the surgery,” my mother announces right after I pick up her call and say hello. Her voice is heavy with foreboding, as if she’s having a heart transplant instead of a hip replacement.
“Hi, Mom.” I set my watercolor pencil down and lean back in my chair. “Good, I’m glad to hear it.”
“I’m doing both hips at once. Dr. Rodriguez said I’d need to have the second one done soon anyway, and one recovery period is better than two.”
“Okay.” Moving my sketchpad out of the way, I reach for my planner and open it up. “What’s the date?”
“September eighth.”
I blink. “As in one week from today?”
“Yes. I was lucky to get in so quick, and insurance has already approved it. You’ll have to come home immediately and stay for six weeks.”
The familiar headache begins to build, like someone is tightening screws at my temples. “Mom, that’s— That’s going to be hard for me.”
“You knew this was coming, Mila,” she says, her tone clipped. “I told you months ago.”
“I know, but you said you didn’t want to do it until after the holidays.”
“I changed my mind. What, you’re so busy doodling flowers, you can’t come home to take care of your mother?”
I let her usual dig at my job as a botanical illustrator go by without comment. “Of course I can. It’s just that a little more notice would have been nice.”
“I’ve put this off for a year already. And the pain I’m in is excruciating. I can hardly teach advanced ballet anymore.” A carefully weighted pause. “But I suppose if you’re too busy for me, I could hire one of those home health aides. Let a complete stranger come into the house…”
The headache intensifies behind one eye. I switch off the gooseneck lamp on my drawing table in an effort to stave off the inevitable pain that accompanies most conversations with my mother. “That won’t be necessary.”
“Or I could ask your cousin Lauren,” she says with an air of martyrdom. “She was so good to your Aunt Jackie when she had her knee surgery. Although Lauren will have her hands full running the studio while I’m recuperating.”
My left hand curls into a fist, nails digging into my palm. “You don’t need to ask Lauren, Mom.”
“Well, I don’t want to be a burden.” Her voice lingers dramatically on the word, one of her favorites in any performance. I imagine her at the height of her career, leaning into a perfect penché arabesque.
“You’re not a burden.” With the phone sandwiched between my ear and shoulder, I pencil in the surgery date for Monday the 8th and circle it. “When would you like me there?”
She sighs. “I suppose I can handle this week’s pre-op appointments on my own, but I’ll certainly need help preparing the house over the weekend.
I have a whole list from the doctor’s office—rearrange the furniture, remove all trip hazards, and a dozen other things I can’t possibly manage alone. Can you be here by Thursday?”
Thursday. Today is Monday.
Flipping calendar pages for the next six weeks, I look at deadlines I’ll need to meet, appointments I’ll have to reschedule, events I’ll have to miss. Not to mention the classes I’ll have to teach virtually instead of in person—if the college where I’m an adjunct professor agrees.
“Mila, did you hear me?”
“Yes. I heard you. Thursday.” I rub my temples with one hand.
“You’ll be here?”
“I’ll be there.”
“Thank you, darling.” Only she can wield an endearment like a knife. “I don’t know why you have to make things so difficult. I’m going to lie down now. I’m getting one of my dizzy spells.”
I end the call and set my phone on the table.
Hart’s Landing. Immediately. For six weeks.
My mother.
My hands ball up reflexively, and my breathing quickens. I do an exercise my therapist taught me called box breathing, where you inhale for four counts, hold for four, exhale for four, hold for four.
As if she senses I need a calm presence, my glossy black Bombay, Beatrix, sidles up and winds her way around my ankles.
Unclenching my fists, I reach down to pet her.
“Looks like we’re taking a trip to Hart’s Landing, Bea.
” She gazes up at me and meows in protest. “I know what I always say. But I don’t think I can get out of it this time. ”
Normally, I avoid returning to my hometown by suggesting my mother meet me in Manhattan for a girls’ weekend.
There’s nothing she loves more than shopping on Fifth Avenue, sipping cocktails on rooftop bars, and pointing out all the places she used to go when she lived in the city that never sleeps. Before I ruined her life.
My head is still pounding, so I get up from my work table and shuffle into the bathroom, where I tip two ibuprofen into my palm. My cat follows me, watching with her absinthe eyes as I lean over, cup water from the faucet, and swallow the pills.
“She didn’t give me any choice.” I backhand my mouth as I face my accuser. “Don’t look at me like that.”
Beatrix looks at me like that.
“What was I supposed to do, say no?”
A vehement meow.
“Even if she wasn’t the best mother in the world, she raised me all by herself, didn’t she?
” I run through the list of excuses I always make for Mom.
“She gave up her ballet career when she got pregnant with me. She moved back to her hometown so we’d have support.
She put food on the table and clothes on my back, and I can’t think of anything I lacked growing up. ”
Beatrix tilts her head.
“Okay, maybe one thing.” I flip off the bathroom light. “But I don’t want to talk about it.”
That evening, I’m in my bedroom packing when my roommate Jess appears in the doorway.
She’s an attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission, wears a suit and heels every day, and always remains in complete control of her emotions.
We’re total opposites, but somehow, living together just works.
“I got your text,” she says. “Yes, I can water your plants. But you’re going where for six weeks?”
“Hart’s Landing, Michigan. Where I grew up.” I glance at Beatrix’s carrier, which I’ve placed on the floor to allow her to explore it. She’s been keeping her distance, eyeing it suspiciously from her perch on the windowsill.
Jess’s eyebrows shoot up. “I thought you never went back there.”
“I don’t.” I pull some nicer things off hangers in my closet—a couple of blouses, a skirt, a stretchy black dress. “But my mom is having a double hip replacement next week and needs my help.”
“Next week? She didn’t give you much notice, did she?”
“Giving me notice isn’t really her style.”
Jess shakes her head. “You know, you really need better boundaries.”
“Boundaries?” I tilt my head like a dog who just heard a strange noise. “What are those?”
“Those are things you set so that people like your mom and your asshole ex-husband don’t constantly take advantage of you.”
I give her a wry smile. “I’m working on it.”
“How? Your no-dating rule?” She shoots me a pointed look. “That’s not working on it. That’s avoiding it.”
“You sound like my therapist.”
“I’m serious, Mila.” She folds her arms as she cross-examines me. “How are you going to teach your classes? What about the design project for Ivy & Stone? You’ve been waiting years for an opportunity like that.”
“I spoke with the college. Both of the courses I’m teaching—color theory and botanical art history—can be taught remotely until I’m back.
As for the design work, I’ll figure it out.
” I toss a pair of heels into my bag. Some sneakers.
My flip-flops. “It’s not like I’ll have anything else to do while I’m there.
I plan to just lie low and get through it. ”
Jess wanders into my room and sits on the end of my bed. Leans back on her hands. “So what’s it like? Hart’s Landing?”
“Same as any small town. Everyone knows everyone’s business. Gossip moves faster than traffic. Nothing ever changes.”
“Why do you hate going back so much?”
In my head, the sirens are still screaming. “It’s complicated.”
“Do you still have friends there?”
The hidden ache in my heart swells. “Not anymore. I used to have the best friends ever in Hart’s Landing—there were five of us who grew up together. We were inseparable.”
“What happened?”
The ache sharpens into knife-edged pain.
“One of them—her name was Lydia, but we called her Ladybug—had leukemia. She died February of our senior year. Things fell apart with the rest of us that summer.” I pause.
“Or maybe I should say they blew up. The last time I saw any of them was ten years ago. August tenth.”
“Wow. You remember the exact date?”
“Yes.” Exhaling, I cringe. “It was the night I set fire to the bakery.”
Jess bolts upright. “The night you did what?”
“Not on purpose,” I explain quickly. “It was an accident—a flour dust explosion after my shift.”
Don’t think about the letter. Just don’t.
“Wait a minute. Back up.” She holds up her palms. “Flour dust is explosive?”
“Yes. And it’s Bakery Safety 101 not to kick up too much of it when you sweep, but I was so nervous that night, I forgot.
All it needs is the right amount of heat to ignite—could be static electricity, faulty wiring, an oven left on.
” A burner not switched all the way off.
“The official investigation was inconclusive. But since I was the closing employee, everyone in town blamed me for being negligent. Or at least distracted.”
“Distracted by what?”
Wrong question, I think. It’s whom I was distracted by, not what.
I knot my fingers together and stare down at them. Remember the way I clutched Everett’s shirt in my fists. “I wasn’t exactly alone when the fire started.”
“Who was with you?”
I proceed to tell her everything: about Lydia, the grief we felt after her death, the promise we made to honor her birthday by living the night like there was no tomorrow.
I remember our meeting at the foundry like it was yesterday, so I tell her about that too—about the task my friends chose for me.
I don’t tell her about throwing the stone in the river, because I’ve never told anyone about that.
That stone was just for me.
“Holy shit. So you locked lips with this guy, and the place exploded?” Leave it to a lawyer to summarize the whole saga in a sentence.
“Pretty much.” I close my eyes, remembering all the repercussions of that night. “Insurance didn’t cover the damage, so the McKeans had to sell the property. I felt awful.”
“Jesus. I can’t believe you never told me about this.”
“By the time I met you at freshman orientation, all I wanted was to leave Hart’s Landing and what happened there behind me.” Kneeling down, I refold some items to make more room in my suitcase. “I got a new phone. Switched my major from dance to art. Chopped off my hair.”
“It was shorter when I met you,” she recalls, thinking back.
“I missed my friends so much it physically hurt. Even with a new number and shorter hair, living in a new place and meeting new people… I thought about them every day and felt horrible about the way things ended. I still do. But I learned an important lesson.”
“What was that?”
“You can’t live your life like there’s no tomorrow.” I close my suitcase and zip it. “Because tomorrow has a way of always showing up.”