Chapter 7
seven
Olivia didn’t want to talk—to anyone. Including Malcolm as he drove them home.
At first she thought it was because he had abandoned her—or that was how it had felt.
But it wasn’t long until she realized it was her mother getting under her skin.
She would have preferred to have been irritated with Malcolm since she knew that would pass quickly.
But she knew it was her mother. As usual.
She hadn’t really wanted to help Mom with the Christmas decorating.
She knew better. She’d helped Dad get the artificial tree set up in front of the living room window, keeping her negative opinions about fake trees to herself.
She knew that would only create an unwanted battle, pitting her and Dad against Mom.
But after testing the lights, Dad announced he was heading out to church and invited Olivia to join him.
She was about to say yes, but seeing Mom’s forlorn expression filled her with daughterly guilt.
After all, it wasn’t like she visited the home front very often.
And it had been ages since she’d helped Mom decorate for Christmas.
Why not while away an hour, hopefully less, with her mother while waiting for Malcolm to return?
Especially since he’d said he wanted an early start on the road this morning.
She sighed and slumped back in the car seat, crossing her arms and closing her eyes, prepared to feign napping.
The truth was she wasn’t ready to engage with Malcolm quite yet.
Not that she exactly blamed him for her miserable morning, but she wanted to escape brooding over him .
. . and she began to replay the morning with Mom.
It had all started out innocently enough.
Olivia had offered to help carry the neatly stacked storage bins from the garage.
Each plastic bin was clearly labeled, thanks to the label maker her mom credited Martha Stewart’s ingenuity for.
And when they began to open the carefully packed bins, every item was predictably wrapped in pale blue tissue paper.
“You always pack everything so carefully,” Olivia absently said as she unwound a crystal snowflake hanging by a ribbon. She twirled the piece in the sunlight coming in from the front window. “Pretty.”
“Pretty fragile. Do be careful with that,” Mom warned. “That’s my Swarovski box.”
“Wow, really?”
“Each piece in there retails for about a hundred dollars. Although they were less when I got them, plus I got a quantity discount.”
Olivia stared at the box, guessing the total contents’ replacement value could be around two grand. “My goodness. Maybe you should handle this box.”
“Yes. How about you get on the stepladder and I’ll unwrap and hand them to you, and you can place them where I point.”
“Okay.” Olivia wanted to jokingly ask Mom if she had a remote control, and Olivia could be the robot, but knew better.
While Olivia perched on the ladder, her mom used a yardstick from her craft room as a pointer, specifically instructing where and how to hang the precious snowflakes.
By the time they got to the lower branches, Olivia felt so nervous, she wished she’d put on an extra layer of antiperspirant after her shower that morning.
“Maybe you should take it from here,” she suggested. “I can work on something else.” Hopefully something less breakable and less expensive. To her relief, her mom agreed.
“How about this bin?” Olivia read the label to herself: Lladró.
She wasn’t sure what that meant, but the wrapped pieces looked large and didn’t seem too risky.
And, unwrapping the first large piece, it turned out to be one of Mom’s porcelain angels.
Fragile, yes, but not as delicate as the crystal snowflakes.
She carried the first angel over to the cleared and dusted walnut table in the foyer.
It was long and narrow with a gilt frame mirror above it.
Normally it held a crystal vase with flowers, but it was where her mother always placed her collection of angel statues, which Olivia had never paid much attention to, except that they were too formal for her taste.
Olivia gently set the figurine down with satisfaction. So far so good. She returned to the living room, pausing to look at the tree and out the front window, hoping to see Malcolm’s blue SUV outside, but no luck. So she unwrapped another angel.
“It’s been years since I helped you decorate for Christmas,” she commented after setting the second angel on the sideboard. “But if I remember, you didn’t have all these fancy things back when I was young.”
“You’ve been away from home for so long. First college, then your career.” Her mom’s voice was wistful. “I’ve done the decorating by myself for years.”
“I didn’t even help you do this before college,” Olivia commented.
“In fact, the last time I remember helping, I was about eleven or twelve.” She didn’t mention how she used to get scolded for carelessness, or how they’d gotten into a hot argument one year over how to hang the silver tinsel.
Olivia had wanted to do it in clumps that year, hoping to finish the task quickly, but her mom had insisted on doing it one at a time, strand by strand.
It had seemed a silly waste of time to Olivia, and that was the end of it.
Not many Christmases later, Mom’s decor was ramped up to create a more “elegant” Christmas, and Olivia had lost all interest. As a teenager, she hadn’t minded being left out, and their home turned into a holiday “show place,” or show-off place, as Olivia had called it to her friends.
“Whatever happened to the old nativity set you used to let me put up on the table? The one Grandma Lulu gave me when I was little.”
“Oh, that old thing? I think I donated it to a church rummage sale.”
“You gave it away?” Olivia put her hands on her hips, glaring at her mother. “But it was mine.”
“Oh, I didn’t think you’d mind. It was a pretty cheesy set. Plastic and paint chipping off the pieces. And the stable had fallen apart.”
“But I loved it, Mom. I would’ve saved it for my children . . . well, if that ever happens. But, really, it was mine. You shouldn’t have gotten rid of it.”
Her mother looked up from hanging a low snowflake with an exasperated expression. “Well, look at all these fabulous pieces you will get someday, Olivia. The Swarovski and Lladró and lots of other costly treasures. Surely you and your someday children should appreciate that.”
“I loved that old nativity set,” she muttered, more to herself than her mother, turning away to unwrap another angel. How many were there anyway?
“What?” Mom’s sharp tone insinuated she’d heard her.
“It’s just that, as a child, the nativity set represented the true meaning of Christmas.
” Olivia kept her voice even, although her temper was rising.
“I always loved setting up the angels and shepherds and little lambs. And the fancy wise men with their gifts that looked sparkly to a four-year-old, and finally I’d stand Joseph and Mary in the stable and baby Jesus in his manger, with some real grass from our yard spread around for hay.
And maybe it was only cheap plastic and chipped and wobbly, but to me it felt more real than this.
” She held up the large angel she’d just unwrapped like it was court evidence.
“Be careful with that,” Mom warned. “Some of that Lladró is irreplaceable.”
Olivia wanted to turn up her nose and shout that she preferred cheesy dime store ornaments to these sparkly, showy things any day, but knew that would only create a real row and make her wait for Malcolm seem even longer.
Where was he, anyway? And so she said nothing as she carried the angel to the foyer.
And then it had happened. In her haste and frustration, she’d caught the heel of her boot on the Persian carpet, lost her balance, and, in an attempt to catch herself on the arm of a chair, the figurine had slipped from her hands, crashing into a hundred shiny white shards on the hardwood floor.
Olivia grimaced to remember the awful scene still imprinted in her brain.
Why was she even replaying it now? Still slumped down in the passenger seat, she glanced at Malcolm.
He seemed totally oblivious to her and her foul mood, or just focused on the road.
Or maybe deep in thought. What was he thinking about?
Probably what a mistake it was to get involved with her and her family.
She knew it hadn’t been a coincidence that he’d gotten up so early and quietly snuck out.
And she knew that was what he’d done because she’d been up early too.
She’d woken before seven with the idea of offering to take him to breakfast in town as a thank-you for giving her a ride yesterday.
And hopefully it’d give her a chance to apologize for her cold, sterile home, her mom’s bad behavior, and the argument he might’ve overheard between her parents last night.
She’d imagined them both laughing over the whole thing.
Really, on some level it had been rather humorous.
At least it had seemed that way earlier.
Now she wasn’t sure Malcolm would even see the humor in it. She didn’t think she could.
If she felt like talking with Malcolm right now, she might confess about breaking her mother’s most valued piece of Lladró.
A rare piece, according to Mom, worth around a thousand dollars!
Olivia still felt sick to think she’d dropped it like that, almost like a Freudian mistake.
But she felt even more sickened at how her mother had reacted.
As if Olivia had done it purposely! Even Olivia’s tears and sincere apology had seemed to fall on deaf ears.
And so she’d acted like a child and run to her room, watching out the window for Malcolm’s SUV to turn down their street before sneaking down the stairs and out the front door to skulk away before things got worse.
She snuck another peek at Malcolm. Focused on the winding road, he didn’t even know she was looking.
Perhaps he’d forgotten she was even here.
She studied his profile, admiring the straight nose and strong jaw, and her heart softened.
Malcolm was a good man. Probably too good to put up with her and her difficult family.
For a split second she was tempted to spill her guts and tell him about her heartache with Mom, as well as her dad’s idea about an intervention for Mom, and about bringing in her free-spirited grandmother to really shake things up.
As if that would be the magic bullet. But she knew an intervention was a long shot at best. And she suspected Malcolm wouldn’t care anyway.
It looked like he had his mind on other, more important things . . . and who could blame him?