chapter twenty-five

It takes the rest of the day for Mama to separate herself from her laptop. Between writing and constantly checking her phone and grinning—not smiling, but grinning—as she reads whatever the screen says and types a reply, she’s barely looked up at the actual people in her family since we ate turkey sandwiches for lunch.

And even then, she kept checking her phone.

“Who do you keep talking to?” I finally asked her as Peach and I got our shoes on to go for a walk. Even though it had turned overcast and gray outside, I needed to get Peach some exercise. Mama sat in her chair, computer on her lap, thumbs flying over her phone.

She paused at my question, just for a second, and met my eyes. I could almost hear what she was thinking, those mom gears turning as she tried to figure out what to say. It was the sigh that did it—a big inhale and exhale that confirmed everything Lemon hoped was going on, everything I saw between Mama and Claire a few days ago at the kitchen table. Still, I didn’t want her to say it. I wished I could tuck my question back into my mouth, take Peach on a walk all the way to California.

Mama sighed again. I looked down at my shoelaces, tied them in triple knots.

“I’m talking to Claire,” she said. “We’re going out to dinner tonight. You and Peach are going to hang out with Lemon over at her house.”

“Yay!” Peach chirped from the floor next to me, where she was concentrating on making bunny ears with her laces.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“Hmm?” Mama said, her eyes back on her phone.

“You and Claire. Where are you going?”

Mama glanced at me. “Just out to eat. A place in town called Rilla’s. We won’t be late. Not like the night of the Solstice Fire, I promise.”

The question Is it a date? was right there behind my teeth, but I swallowed it back down. I didn’t want to hear it from Mama’s own mouth. That would make it too real. Instead, while Peach hunted for sea glass washed up on the shore—I made her stick to dry sand, far away from the ocean’s edge and far, far away from Lemon’s side of the beach—I typed Rilla’s into my phone’s browser.

It was a restaurant in downtown Rose Harbor, just like Mama said. What she failed to mention was that it was a fancy restaurant right on the water. The online photos showed candlelit tables with white tablecloths, couples in nice clothes and pearls smiling at each other over glasses of red wine, diamond rings sparkling on their fingers.

Romantic.

That’s what Rilla’s was. Dim and golden-lit and romantic.

Now, hours later, I can’t get the restaurant’s romantic scene out of my head while Mama gets ready in her bedroom and I stare at her laptop. It’s right there, just sitting on her chair. I’ve got Peach busy with her beads and bracelets in our room and the shower has just turned off in Mama’s bathroom, so I know I’ve got a few minutes.

I ignore the alarm bells going off in my head and pick up the laptop. I flip it open… and am immediately stopped by a screen asking for a password. I try everything. Peach’s and my birthdays, our first and middle names, Mama’s, even Mum’s. Nothing works. I hear Mama in her room, opening her closet door, rummaging through bathroom drawers. I’m running out of time and I have to know. I have to know what she’s really thinking. Mama’s writing is her whole life and when Mum died, that part of her died too.

I have to know what’s come back to life.

A thought pops into my head. It’s a hopeful thought, dangerously so, but it’s all I can think of. I type it in.

39CameliaStreet

I tap Enter and Mama’s computer springs to life. I breathe out, feel a relieved smile pull at my mouth. Maybe all of this with Claire isn’t what I think it is after all. How could it be, if Mama’s still typing our old address, the last place where the four of us were a family, Mum’s home, into her computer every day?

Hope blooms in my chest like a wildflower. I almost close Mama’s computer right then, scared the feeling will wilt, but then I see the file on her desktop.

SYLVIE BANKS BEGINS AGAIN

I click on the little icon, and Mama’s fancy writing program boots up. It opens to where she left off, fifteen chapters in. I scan the page she’s on, but nothing makes sense. There’s a character named Sylvie who’s working in her garden, and she keeps thinking about some woman named Gemma, who must be the love interest. At least I think she is, but there’s another woman’s name on the page—Bryn—so I’m not sure who’s who or what’s going on. Sylvie just keeps wrestling with some stubborn snapdragons and worrying about what Bryn must think of her.

I scan the program’s sidebar, which is just a bunch of chapter numbers, but then, near the bottom, there’s an icon titled Synopsis.

I click on it and read.

Sylvie Banks is heartbroken. She’s also a complete hermit. Ever since the love of her life, Bryn, died two years ago in a tragic accident, she’s barely left her house, and she definitely hasn’t thought about meeting someone new. She spends her evenings alone with her cat, reading and working on her design business from the comfort of her living room. Real pants are a thing of the past, and she’s more than happy to stay in her sweat pants sipping hot tea for the foreseeable future, thank you very much.

Then she meets Gemma.

Or rather, she meets Gemma again. Gemma Brownlee and Sylvie Banks were childhood best friends until Gemma’s family moved away when the girls were twelve, but not before the girls shared a goodbye kiss, a kiss that neither woman has ever forgotten.

Suddenly, Sylvie finds herself feeling things again. Friendly things, Sylvie tells herself, but it’s not long before her friendly feelings for Gemma blossom into something decidedly more romantic. Gemma, for her part, makes no secret of her interest in Sylvie, but she’s haunted by her own share of ghosts.

Can both women put aside past loves and losses to make room for a new one true love?

“Hazey?”

My head shoots up to see Peach standing in the doorway of the living room.

“Why are you crying?” she asks.

I touch my scarred cheek, and my fingers come away wet.

“I’m not,” I say, wiping my face. “I’m fine.” But my voice trembles, my throat aches with the effort to hold it all in.

Peach points. “That’s Mama’s computer.”

“I was just… looking something up. Did you make a new bracelet?”

She frowns but holds up one she’s been working on for a few days, colors blurring in my vision. I give her a thumbs-up, but she keeps her frown. I need to close Mama’s computer. Put it away. Forget this story she’s writing.

This story where Peach and I don’t even exist.

Where Claire is her new one true love and Mum is…

Mum is past.

Mum is gone.

Mama begins again. Fresh. Like nothing before even existed.

But my fingers won’t move. They won’t close the laptop.

“Go get your jacket, okay?” I say to my sister.

She nods again, turns, and does what I ask, but I know I can’t have this thing in my hands when she comes back. In Mama’s bedroom, I hear her diffuser whirring, drying her curls, which means her makeup is done and she’s dressed. Drying her hair is always the last thing she does when she’s getting ready to go somewhere.

I look back at Mama’s story. I click on the title right above the chapter headings at the very top of the sidebar. When I do, the whole book unfurls on the screen, chapter after horrible chapter.

Thirty-three thousand, two hundred forty-one words.

I press Command-A, highlighting every single letter.

Then I hit Delete.