“I heard you were looking for me,” Gloria said, with a frown. She rested her weight on her cane, and after I got over my shock that it was her, not Will, standing in the hallway, I opened the door wider and gestured for her to come sit down.
“I was,” I said. “But Liza said you were busy.”
“I am,” she said pointedly, and I suspected she had come straight here from dinner, as she wore a black shift dress, embroidered with diamonds around the collar and cutout sleeves, and still had a gray diamond-studded fur stole draped through the crooks of her elbows. I pondered over how much her outfit must be worth as she took a little time to get down on the couch, and then she rested her cane against the side of the coffee table. “How’s your head?” she asked me, once she was seated.
“Better,” I said. “I think I’ll live.”
“Glad to hear it.” She didn’t quite sound glad, but she wasn’t scowling either. She stared at me, like she was waiting for me to explain myself, but she was the one who’d showed up here, so I didn’t say anything for a moment, I stared right back at her. “I suppose I came here because I have something I want to say to you,” she finally said.
“Go ahead,” I said quickly.
“Stay away from Will.” Her words vibrated and then settled.
It was not at all what I had been expecting her to say, and I opened my mouth in surprise, then closed it without saying anything at all. “Will?” I finally repeated lamely. We had so many ground rules. How could Gloria possibly know anything? “I don’t understand.”
“You’re wearing his sweatshirt,” she said pointedly.
“I was cold on set after I hit my head.” The lie burst out of me, sounding believable.
She stared at me and frowned. “I saw you. In the cameras outside my house last week.” She spoke slowly, decisively. “The tree house. Were you cold then too?”
Cameras? Gloria had outdoor cameras pointed at Will’s tree house? I felt warmth creeping across my cheeks and put my hands up to try and cool them. Gloria had already known about me and Will before we had set any ground rules. How was that even possible?
“I came here to make a deal with you,” Gloria was saying calmly now.
“A deal?” Even repeating her words I felt like I was about to sell my soul to the devil, and I suddenly felt queasy.
“You’ve been asking me questions all week. Ask me one you want the answer to the most, and I’ll answer it for you right here, right now. Truthfully.”
Truthfully? Did Gloria even have it in her to differentiate between the truth and fiction? Then I remembered she was trying to cut a deal. “And what do I have to do in return?” I asked her.
“Stay away from Will,” she said coldly. “Forget you ever met him.”
I chewed on my bottom lip and curled my fingers into the long, soft cuffs of his sweatshirt. “What if I don’t want to?” I said softly. Maybe Will was right. Maybe the past was the past and the future could be something different, something that had the two of us wrapped inside a little bubble where nothing—or no one—else mattered.
“You already hurt him once,” Gloria said. “I won’t watch you do it again.”
Hurt him? I would never do that. But then I thought about little Will, holding my hand in the snow. I would’ve been three or four years old back then. Had something happened that I couldn’t remember now? “I don’t understand. How did I hurt Will?” I asked Gloria.
“Is that your one question?” She raised her eyebrows.
I sighed and shook my head. I had so many questions, but as much as I liked Will, that one wasn’t at the top of my list. I thought about it for another moment. There was one thing I wanted to know. No, I needed to know. “Why did you bring me here to play you? Really?”
Gloria nodded, like this was exactly the question she had been expecting, and I felt certain her answer was about to have something to do with my mother. “Max,” she said softly.
Max Cooper? The man who had died, whose house Gloria lived in. The man who made Will think that nothing good could come from continuing to dig into the past. The man who Gloria had looked truly happy with in the photograph I’d found on her desk. But what did any of that have to do with me? “I don’t understand,” I finally said.
“Because Max was the love of my life.” Suddenly Gloria sounded breathless, like she was speaking through a rush of wind. “And because you, Annie, are his daughter.”