Chapter 21
Lizanne
The shop was the kind of place that didn’t put prices on anything. Rose had learned in the past two weeks that this meant the prices were either negotiable or catastrophic, and in Lizanne’s world they were usually both.
She stood in front of a display of linen throws while John, the camera operator, moved around them in the slow patient arc he used when he wasn’t sure what he was looking for yet. Pat sat on a cream ottoman near the door with her tablet, watching the monitor feed.
“So tell me,” Loraine said, in the tone that meant this was going in the show, “how is the merging going? Two very different worlds coming together under one roof.”
“Smoothly,” Lizanne said, holding up a throw. “Rose has excellent taste.”
“I have different taste,” Rose said. “Which is not the same thing.”
“She’s been very patient with my existing decor.”
“Your existing decor is a lot of gray.”
“Gray is timeless.”
John moved in slightly. Loraine made a note. Rose caught herself and smoothed her expression. She picked up a candle from the shelf beside her, looked at the price, and put it back down.
Two weeks. It had been two weeks since the wedding and the kitchen and the sunroom floor and she had been going to bed in the pool house every night and staying there.
Some nights she lay in the dark thinking about the short walk across the grounds to the main house and the corridor she knew by now and the room at the end of it.
She looked at the ceiling and redirected herself, which worked with varying success depending on the night.
Lizanne had not pushed. That was the thing Rose kept returning to.
Lizanne, who pushed at everything, who had built an entire situation to get what she wanted, had not pushed once in two weeks.
She was present and composed and occasionally funny.
She took Rose’s hand when the cameras were on them and sometimes when they weren’t, and she had not once appeared at the pool house door or made Rose feel the weight of what had happened between them pressing against her.
Rose couldn’t decide if that was considerate or infuriating. Some nights it felt like both at the same time.
“Can we talk about Daisy?” Loraine said.
Rose set the candle down. “We’ve been clear about this. Daisy isn’t part of the show.”
“Of course, of course. But Lizanne—” Loraine looked at her directly, stylus ready. “How does it feel? Being a stepmother. Taking on someone else’s child.”
Rose watched Lizanne. She expected the smooth, camera-ready answer that would give Loraine what she needed and close the subject.
It didn’t come.
“I always wanted children,” Lizanne said.
Loraine’s stylus stopped.
“When I was young and broke and going to auditions on the bus, it wasn’t possible.
And then I was working, and working meant I was never anywhere long enough to think about it seriously.
And then I was with Trina for years, and Trina never wanted them.
” She paused. “So, I stopped thinking about it. Told myself I’d made peace with it. ”
Rose wetted her lips, watching quietly.
“My parents have been gone years,” Lizanne said. “No siblings. For a long time it’s just been work, Katrina, Pat and a very small circle.” She set the throw down. “I like the idea of a family. I always have. I just stopped expecting it was going to be part of my life.”
She straightened up and looked at Loraine, who smiled. “With Daisy’s birthday coming up, you’ll have another chance to experience some of that.”
“Right,” Lizanne said, but shot Rose a look that said Why didn’t you tell me?
Loraine called a break twenty minutes later. The crew went outside with their coffees and John set his camera on a side table. The shop went quiet except for the traffic outside.
Lizanne moved alongside Rose near a display of glassware.
“I didn’t know it was her birthday,” she said.
“She’s going to be six. I was planning something small at my mom’s. Cake, a few friends from daycare. You wouldn’t need to be involved.”
Lizanne looked at the glassware. “Have it at the house.”
“Lizanne—”
“No cameras. Daisy’s friends and whoever you want there.” She picked up a glass and turned it over. “Some of my cast have small children. They could come. Daisy would have more people her own age.”
Rose watched her.
“Understated,” Rose said. “Nothing excessive.”
Lizanne set the glass down. “Fortunately, I know an excellent party planner.”
Rose almost smiled.
Outside, Craig and Loraine stood with their backs to the window. The afternoon light came through the shop front in long pale strips across the floor.
“Was it true?” Rose said. “What you told the camera.”
Lizanne looked at her.
“About wanting a family. Was that for the show or was it true?”
“It was true,” Lizanne said.
“You haven’t seemed very interested in Daisy,” Rose said. “I don’t mean that as a criticism. I just noticed.”
“Because you told me not to parent her. So I haven’t.
” Lizanne looked at her directly. “I’ve been trying to stay inside what you asked for.
You didn’t choose any of this—I pressured you into a marriage and a television show and moved you into my house.
The least I could do was not push into your daughter’s life on top of all of that. ”
Rose was quiet for a moment.
“I’m starting to think,” she said, “that being married to you is not the worst thing.”
Lizanne’s mouth moved. “High praise.”
“I mean it.”
“You have a very demanding business to run. I’m sure that’s the primary benefit.”
“There are other benefits,” Rose said. She took Lizanne’s hand.
Lizanne’s fingers closed around hers and they stood like that between the glassware and the linen throws while John finished his coffee outside and Loraine scrolled her tablet. Then Lizanne said, quietly, “The changing room is in the back.”
Rose looked at her. “That is not what I was suggesting.”
“There’s a dress I want to try on.”
“There is no dress.”
“There might be. They do have some in the next room.”
“Lizanne.”
“Rose.”
Rose glanced at the window. Loraine had her back to the shop. John was on his phone.
The changing room at the back was a single large cubicle with a velvet curtain and mirrors on three sides. Lizanne pulled the curtain across and turned, and Rose kissed her before she’d finished turning.
It was different from the pool house. Quieter. More deliberate. Lizanne kissed her back with both hands cupping her face.
Lizanne’s hands moved to her waist and pulled her in.
They kissed slowly at first, then less slowly.
Rose pulled Lizanne’s blouse loose from her waistband and her hands found the warm skin of her back and Lizanne made a quiet sound against her mouth.
Lizanne pressed her back against the mirror and Rose felt the cold glass through her shirt and Lizanne’s warmth in front of her and the contrast of it, cold and warm, everywhere at once.
Lizanne drew back just enough to look at her. The mirrors gave Rose back her own face from three angles and she found she didn’t mind. Not with Lizanne looking at her like that.
“We have a few minutes at most before they come looking,” Rose said, against her jaw.
“I’m aware.” Lizanne’s hand slid to the waistband of her jeans. The button gave.
Rose stopped making arguments.
Lizanne’s fingers moved through her slowly and Rose’s head went back against the mirror. Lizanne pressed her mouth to her neck and stayed there, lips warm against her pulse, while her fingers kept moving. Rose gripped the back of her blouse and held on.
“You’re already—” Lizanne started.
“Ready for you? Yes, yes, I am.”
Lizanne didn’t finish the sentence. She pressed her lips to the corner of Rose’s jaw instead, and her fingers moved deeper, and Rose bit down hard on her lip.
Lizanne’s thumb found the right place. Moved in slow, deliberate circles that didn’t waver or rush regardless of the clock.
Rose’s hips pushed into her hand. Her breathing had gone ragged and she was gripping the back of Lizanne’s blouse with both hands now, holding on while Lizanne held her up against the mirror and kept the pressure exactly where it needed to be.
“Rose,” Lizanne said, very quietly, against her ear. Just her name. Nothing else.
That was what did it.
Rose came with her forehead pressed hard against Lizanne’s shoulder and one hand over her own mouth and the other twisting the back of Lizanne’s blouse past any hope of saving it.
She shook, silent except for the breath she couldn’t fully muffle, and Lizanne held her until the trembling eased and Rose could breathe again.
They straightened themselves in the mirror.
Rose tucking her shirt, Lizanne doing what she could with her blouse, both of them not quite looking at each other and not quite not looking.
Rose ran a hand through her hair. Lizanne smoothed her collar.
A completely ordinary series of actions that had no business feeling the way they felt.
They walked back out into the shop, past the glassware and the linen throws and the candles with no prices on them.
Loraine looked up from her tablet. John picked up his camera.
Rose lifted a throw from the nearest display and said she thought this one would work well in the bedroom.
John started rolling, and the afternoon resumed as though nothing had happened in the back of the shop at all.
Which was, Rose thought, becoming something of a recurring theme in her life.