WILLOW HAD PROMISED HERSELF she wouldn’t cry. She’d done all right in that regard during her mother’s time in New Mexico, but now that the moment of truth was here, she could no longer hold back the tears. She was a wreck.
Which was why she had to come clean with her mother tonight. About Andy. About everything. Because she needed her mother like she’d never needed her before. Heaven help me.
Since Andy was at the center of everything, Willow had brought a trifle for dessert. It was a subtle bit of personal symbolism. He was a trifle, a trivial thing at this point. He was of no consequence.
Yeah, right. Willow swiped at the tears rolling down her cheeks. Dead and buried and still throwing hand grenades into her life.
“Honey, talk to me.” Genevieve grabbed another tissue and handed it to Willow.
“I’m trying. It’s hard.” Willow needed to ease into this tale, so she removed the dessert from her mother’s refrigerator and set the trifle in the center of the table. As she spooned crisis-worthy-sized portions onto dessert plates for her mother and herself, she tried to explain. “I need to say this first, or it will get lost, and it’s too important to get lost. I need to start with an apology, Mom. I’m sorry I got into such a snit over your initial dislike of Andy and then used it as a wedge to come between us. I hope you’ll forgive me.”
Genevieve shut her eyes for a moment, and when she opened them again, they glowed with approval, gratitude, and happiness. I should have said this years ago. Willow handed a dessert plate to her mother.
“Oh, honey. I made my share of mistakes, too. Of course I forgive you, and I hope you forgive me, too. Honestly, I think we went through some normal family growing pains. It’s especially challenging when the first child in a family gets married, because you’ve never done it before. It’s hard not to make mistakes the first time around. I wish I’d done many things differently when you and Andy got together.”
Willow took a fortifying bite of chocolate. If not for the AJ part of this, she could have stopped right here. Her mother always had been one to accept an honest apology and generously extend her forgiving heart. But Willow’s guiding word this year was listen, and she was listening to her own heart tonight.
She couldn’t skip straight to the Mom, I need you stuff. Her mother deserved to hear the words.
Besides, Willow hadn’t had enough chocolate to say the most brutal stuff yet. “The apology is only part of it, Mom. Before you left on your New Mexico trip, I told you that I wanted to clear the air, so I need to tell you everything.”
“Okay.” Genevieve nodded encouragingly.
“It’s a bit of a list,” Willow warned.
Genevieve gestured toward their dessert plates. “Which is why you brought Death by Chocolate. I understand. Get on with it, child.”
“Yep. Okay, here goes. Number one on the hit parade—I was divorcing Andy. The day he died, I told him I wanted him to leave.”
Her mother dropped her dessert spoon. “You what?”
“I told Andy I wanted a divorce.”
“Oh, Willow.” Genevieve covered her mouth with her hands. “Why?”
“Where do I start? Remember that Leonardo DiCaprio movie where he plays a con man who forges checks and pretends to be a pilot?”
“I do. He was so handsome in a pilot’s uniform.”
“Well, Andy Eldridge could have been a script consultant.”
Genevieve looked bewildered. “Andy. Your Andy?”
“He was a terrible husband, Mom.”
“What happened? What did he do?” Then Genevieve’s eyes flashed with sudden, fierce anger. “Did he hurt you? The kids?”
Willow should have realized her mother’s thoughts would go to abuse first. Last May, the family discovered that her sister, Brooke, had been in a physically abusive marriage. “He never hit me. Never hit the kids. No, Andy took his meanness in an entirely different direction.”
“Mean,” Genevieve murmured. “That’s the last word I would have used to describe Andy Eldridge.”
“If I start at the beginning, this might make better sense, though I’m not exactly sure where the beginning was. Maybe by our third date. That’s when I decided that Andy was the perfect guy for me.”
“I remember.”
Willow shrugged. “He was charming and handsome and funny and smart. He always knew exactly what to say to make me feel special. I fell head over heels in love with him.”
Genevieve closed her eyes, wincing as if pained. She cleared her throat. “That was such a hard time for us. I didn’t handle it well at all. You fell for him so fast and so hard. It scared me. You threw away your dreams and found new ones so fast.”
“I know. You were right to be scared.” Willow sighed heavily and admitted, “Your instincts were right all along, Mom.”
“Explain.”
Willow stabbed at her dessert with her spoon. “Oh, in the beginning, everything was perfect. He was perfect because perfect was all that he let me see. In hindsight, he was working on me even back then. Changing me. And yes, changing my dreams. He was subtle about it, planting little thoughts and ideas that acted like little wedges between me and you and me and my siblings. I didn’t see, did you?”
“You and I created our own great big wedge, Willow,” Genevieve pointed out. “I told you I didn’t like Andy.”
“Yes, but that was right at the beginning and then you changed your mind and tried to make things better. The thing is, Mom, he never said anything bad about you.”
Genevieve lifted her gaze from her dessert to meet Willow’s. Willow saw that her words had shocked her mother. “Seriously?” Genevieve asked.
Willow nodded. “He never said anything, but he had this way of asking questions that slithered around in my mind, creating doubt. For example, he’d say, ‘Is it healthy for you to be so close to your mother?’ When I look back on our wedding, oh, Mom, I feel so terrible. So ashamed.”
Now a wary note entered her mother’s eyes. “Why?”
“I cut you out. Here you were, gifting Andy and me with the wedding of my dreams, and there toward the end, I turned into Bridezilla. I’m so sorry. I was selfish. Unfortunately, I was listening to Andy, who was whispering in my ear, ‘It’s your special day. You are the only one who matters.’”
Genevieve stood and began picking up the dishes, not meeting Willow’s eyes. Her voice was a little tight as she asked, “What about the mother-daughter spa weekend?”
“Mom, I’ll deal with the dishes.” Willow frowned. “What mother-daughter spa weekend?”
Her mother wrinkled her nose and carried the dishes to the sink. “No, I need something to do with my hands. Andy told me he was treating us to a mother-daughter spa getaway at the Four Seasons. But he called and canceled at the last minute because you were so angry at me over the brand of vodka I ordered for the signature cocktails.”
Willow’s voice went deadly quiet. “That sonofabitch. Mom, I didn’t care about the vodka. He cared about the vodka. And there was never any mother-daughter spa day scheduled that I know about.”
“I see.” Her mother began loading the dishwasher, her motions getting a little jerkier, the actions a little louder with every dish she placed. Willow had loaded the dishwasher as she cooked, so her mother didn’t have much cleanup to do.
“Okay then,” Willow continued. “Moving on. Andy took the job in Nashville without discussing it with me first.”
Standing at the sink, her hands sunk in soapy water, Genevieve muttered, “This just gets better and better.”
Willow stared down at her chocolate-filled spoon, and her stomach took a sick little roll. She set down the utensil, rose, and carried her dessert plate to her mother. “I know. Looking back on it, I can’t believe I went along. He convinced me I was wrong for not being thrilled about this big opportunity he had been offered. I convinced myself that I wanted to live in Nashville, that moving away from our extended families would make us stronger as a couple.”
“Why?”
“He said we needed to cut the apron strings, to depend on each other instead of our families.”
Genevieve put the last plate into the dishwasher and slammed the door.
“You’re thinking awfully loud, Mom,” Willow observed, her tone wry. “Seriously, Willow, you fell for that? and I thought you were smarter than that.”
An inadvertent smile flashed across her mother’s face. “You can hear that, hmm?”
“Loud and clear. I can’t argue with it. What I came to understand is that what Andy wanted was to cut me from my herd.”
Genevieve muttered a curse, reached out, and flipped on the garbage disposal. As the grinding noise filled the kitchen, Willow picked up the leftover trifle from the table, covered it with plastic wrap, and returned it to the refrigerator, all the while trying to collect her thoughts. She needed to keep to her script and say what she needed to say, make the points she wanted to make while she had her mother’s attention.
Because she never, ever wanted to revisit this subject again.
Then, of course, she still had to drop the AJ bomb. And share the new bit of bad news she’d received from Maggie this morning about Tom.
The garbage disposal went silent. Willow said, “It wasn’t all bad, Mom. Honestly, I was happy in Nashville for a long time. And you know Drew and Emma mean the world to me. Andy was an excellent con man, Mom. He had me totally fooled. I did love him for a long time. I was enthralled. Maybe I turned a blind eye to a thing or two, but what wife doesn’t? I needed him to be as perfect as he appeared to be. I think—and please don’t take this the wrong way—but I think that not having a father during my teenage years had a bigger effect on me than I ever realized.”
Tears flooded her mother’s eyes, and Willow wanted to call back the words. Except, they were the truth.
Genevieve wiped her hands on a dish towel and said, “Chocolate’s not enough. I need booze.”
She marched from the kitchen and headed for her great room bar, Willow assumed as she followed behind. Sure enough, her mother removed a crystal highball glass from the cabinet. “Want one?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
Genevieve poured a generous shot of bourbon, tossed it back, then poured another. Oh, Mom. Better pace yourself. I’m just getting started.
Genevieve’s voice sounded weary as she said, “I recognized the void being without a dad left in your sister’s world, even before the trouble last year, but I thought you were okay.” She swirled the whiskey in her glass. “I thought you were happy with Andy.”
“I was. Honestly, Mom. For the most part, I was. It wasn’t until Drew was born that I began to see what he was doing.”
Willow wrapped her arms around herself and paced her mother’s great room. “At first, I couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong, and even when I did, I thought I must be mistaken. But deep down, I think he was jealous of Drew.”
“Oh.” Genevieve’s brow creased as she considered the idea. “That’s not unheard of in some marriages. It’s crummy. I never saw any sign of it. He always seemed like a very loving dad. I thought he was an adrenaline junkie and should have curtailed some of his hobbies once the children came along, but you didn’t seem to mind.”
“I did. I just couldn’t say it. Andy would blow. He was Andy Eldridge, a loving husband, son, and father to the outside world. I’m not sure anyone else saw how controlling, critical, and demanding he was. At home, it was his way or the highway.”
“That bastard,” Genevieve muttered. Her mouth set into a grim line, she carried her drink into the media room, where she had hung pictures of her family on one wall. Willow followed and studied her mother studying the photograph of Andy taken during a climbing expedition in Ecuador. “That sorry SOB.”
Willow drew in a deep breath. Here was her moment of truth. But heaven help me, this is so danged hard. “There’s more, Mom. I found out he had a lover.”
She turned away from the photographs and met Willow’s gaze, a combination of sympathy and fury gleaming in her eyes. “Oh, Willow.”
“Yeah.” Willow took comfort from her mom’s reaction, and as a result, she opened up a little more than she had intended. “I was clueless. He promised he’d always remain faithful to me and our marriage, and I believed him because he was so devasted by the affair Tom had when Andy was a teenager.”
“Oh.” Genevieve slowly nodded. “I’d forgotten about that.”
“Andy so often railed on about the damage it did to their family that I never worried about it. Even during those last months when I had nagging little suspicions, I dismissed them. Despite our problems, I never dreamed he’d cheat on me.”
“Well, I don’t see you ever putting up with that.”
“No. But Mom, that’s not the worst of it.”
Warily, her mother said, “Okay?”
“The worst of it is…” Willow’s voice trailed off. She didn’t want to do this. She knew her mom. Genevieve Prentice would blow a gasket.
“Honey, just tell me,” Genevieve said, exasperation in her tone. “It can’t be that bad.”
Oh yes, it can. “Brace yourself, Mom. Andy got his girlfriend pregnant. When the Eldridges came here for Jake’s wedding, they told me the woman had a son. She named him Andrew John. They call him AJ.”
“Oh my God!”
“It gets even better.” Pressure built in Willow’s chest, and for a moment, she thought the tears would erupt again. Instead, the anxiety turned to ice. She was ice. She had to be frozen to get through this.
“AJ’s mother has died, leaving him orphaned. Maggie and Tom are raising him.”
Genevieve’s mouth gaped. “Why, they’re older than I am. How can they possibly keep up with a toddler? They have to have help.”
“Yes. They have a nanny.”
“Still, that can’t be easy.”
“No, it can’t. I imagine that’s partly why Maggie asked me to move to Texas with the kids. To incentivize the process, they bought us a house.”
“They what?” Genevieve shouted.
Willow relayed the details of the proposition Maggie had presented. Her mother’s back got stiffer with every sentence, her eyes angrier. Willow tried to put some calm into her voice as she finished. “Don’t worry, Mom. I told her no. Like I said earlier. We want to stay here in Lake in the Clouds. Maggie didn’t like it. She argued that Drew and Emma need to know their brother.”
Genevieve gasped audibly. “Their brother. Oh my God. I hadn’t made that connection. What happened to the mother?”
“She had an aneurysm. She was driving. It happened very fast.”
“Oh my God.” Genevieve lifted her hand to her mouth. “Was the boy with her? Was it just like with Andy? That poor child!”
“No. She’d dropped her son off at daycare before it happened.”
“Thank God.” Genevieve took a long sip of her drink. “I cannot believe Maggie. She bought you a house? Why, the nerve of her. The next time I talk to her, I’ll give her a piece of my mind.”
Now for the fun part. Willow found she could use a little of her mother’s liquid courage. “Mind if I have a glass of your bourbon, Mom?”
Genevieve waved her to go ahead. In the time it took Willow to fix her drink, her mother didn’t appear to have moved so much as an eyelash. Take that back. Half of her drink was gone. She said, “Willow, why do I feel you still have a big old heavy shoe to drop?”
Willow swirled her bourbon. “You always did have excellent instincts.”
“Let’s hear it.”
Willow took a long sip of her drink. It was good whiskey, but Willow wasn’t accustomed to drinking liquor straight. It burned her throat. “Maggie called me this morning. Tom had a stroke.”
“Oh no. How bad is it?”
“It’s bad.”
“Oh, that’s terrible. Poor Tom. I’ll have to—” She broke off abruptly and shot Willow a look sharp enough to cut glass. “Oh, no. Oh, no no no no no. Willow, tell me she did not ask you to take care of that child.”
Willow answered by taking another sip of her drink. Another long sip. She thought she could probably get used to it.
“Willow!”
The tears were threatening again. “What was I supposed to say, Mom? Maggie has a crisis on her hands. Her husband may well die. She needs help so she turned to family.”
“That’s a tenuous family connection at best. What about the mother’s family? Surely she had someone.”
“Maggie said there is no one. She’s in a bind, Mom. She has no one else to turn to for help.”
“So, call Child Protective Services,” Genevieve fired back. “That’s their job.”
“C’mon, Mom. You’ve heard Tess’s stories about her time in the foster care system.”
“Oh, all right. Not CPS. But surely there’s someone—”
“This little boy is Drew and Emma’s brother.”
Genevieve sighed heavily. “Don’t you think your plate is full enough already, Willow? You’re a single mother with two children. You’re homeschooling your son. You’re living at a tourist lodge. Not ten minutes ago, you told me you wanted to try to get a new business off the ground. How are you supposed to do that with a toddler in tow?”
These were all arguments Willow had made with herself. She didn’t like arguing against all the points she herself recognized as valid. She was in between a rock and a hard place here.
“I’m not taking him to raise. I’m taking him in only until Maggie can work something else out.”
“Fine.” Genevieve threw out her hands, causing the liquid to slosh out of the glass. “You’ll keep him for a little while, and in the meantime, your children will bond with this boy. So they’ll suffer another loss when you send him back to Maggie. What will that do to them?”
“Dammit, Mom! What am I supposed to say? You are exactly right. I don’t want to bring my dead husband’s love child into my home! I don’t want to look at AJ and be reminded of all the times my husband lied to me because he wasn’t working late like he said he was. I don’t want to feel like pond scum because I can’t see an innocent child but instead see the sins of his parents. All of that is true. But he’s an orphan. He is innocent. He is Drew and Emma’s brother. I need to be able to look them in the eyes when they grow up.”
“I understand all of that. I do. I’m saying there has to be a different solution, something that’s good for AJ and you and your family. Because I know you, Willow. I know you better than anyone else on this earth. Involving yourself with this little boy will break your heart. You told me earlier in this conversation that I had good instincts. You said listen is your guiding word for the year. Well, listen to me, daughter, because my instincts tell me that taking this child into your heart and home will explode in your face. I won’t let you do this. I’ll… I’ll… oh hell.”
Genevieve drew a deep breath, then exhaled in a rush. “I’ll go to Texas and take care of the child until Maggie can make permanent arrangements.”
A lump the size of a golf ball formed in Willow’s throat. Her heart melted. “Oh, Mom. You have the most generous heart of anyone, anywhere. You are always, always, always trying to fix things for your children. Thank you for the thought, but you can’t fix this. This isn’t your problem. You have your passion to seek out and your balance to achieve. AJ is my problem, not yours.”
“Well, I suppose that’s true,” Genevieve said, her tone and her body language grim. “It would be some serious backsliding on my part, wouldn’t it?”
Then Willow’s mother did something entirely out of character. She uttered a primal scream and threw her glass at Andy’s picture, knocking it off the wall. Both the frame and the crystal crashed on the tile floor and shattered.
“Whoa, Mom. That was your Baccarat.”
Eyes flashing, Genevieve looked at Willow and declared, “I am so sorry that Andy Eldridge is already dead, so I can’t murder him myself.”
“I know, Mom,” Willow said in a soothing tone.
“I’m so beyond furious with him!”
“I know, Mom,” she repeated. “Believe me, I did my share of throwing things.”
“How will you manage? A toddler, Willow? And two more? You’ll be run ragged.”
A little bubble of hysteria rose within Willow. “I haven’t told you about the puppy.”
“Puppy! Oh, Willow. You have to be kidding me.”
“I don’t think I am.” She told her mother about Noah Tannehill’s puppies, finishing that part of her tale by saying, “It’s your fault. You threw me under the puppy bus by sending me over there. You and your passion.”
“I didn’t know about the puppies. I was hoping the topic might lead to a more interesting discussion between you and Noah.”
It had, but Willow saw no benefit to going into that particular subject with her mother right at the moment. “Think about it, Mom. As terrible as this sounds, if Drew and Emma get a little brother and a new puppy simultaneously, what will they like best?”
Genevieve shook her head and clicked her tongue. “Oh, that is terrible.”
“I called Drew’s counselor this afternoon and explained the situation. She advised me on how to explain AJ to my kids, and she agreed that a puppy was a great idea. Actually, she thought two puppies might be the ticket.”
Genevieve covered her mouth with her hand, but Willow heard the little horrified snort of laughter. “Oh, heavens. Willow. Two puppies and a toddler? None of them potty-trained, I imagine. Just how old is this child?”
“Not quite two.”
Genevieve shook her head as she stared at the mess of broken glass lying on the floor. “And when is all of this happening?”
“His nanny is bringing him tomorrow.” Sighing, Willow added, “I have to talk to Noah about the puppies.”
“Lovely.” Genevieve glanced up and met Willow’s gaze. “Emotional issues aside, it will be pure hell for you.”
“All I can do is take it one day at a time. Look, let’s not forget that AJ is Maggie’s grandchild, and Maggie wants him. She’s not going to leave him in Colorado indefinitely, and I’m not moving back to Texas. I’ve made that decision, and you gave it your official seal of approval.”
“Yes, I did, didn’t I? Thank God for that piece of timing. You know I’m sincere.”
“Yes, Mom. I’m certain you want us in Colorado. I’m also certain that I don’t want Emma to be forced to make excuses for me in thirty years if AJ grows up to be a great person like Tess, and he asks his half sister why I dumped him into the system when his grandfather had a stroke.”
“Y’all could blame it on me,” Genevieve said with a shrug. “I’ll be dead in thirty years.”
“No, you won’t, Mom. You’ll only be ninety. By then, ninety will be the new seventy.”
“Heaven help me. Heaven help you and your siblings.”
Genevieve’s stare returned once again to the broken glass and damaged frame on the floor, and the amusement faded from her expression. “Oh, Willow. This isn’t fair. This so isn’t fair to you. Where are my scissors? It’s not enough to knock that ass-hole’s picture off the wall. I want to cut it into tiny little pieces.”
“Mom. Please. I can’t deal with it when you use the aword. And remember what you always taught us. Fair is what happens in October in Dallas. Does Colorado have a state fair? Where and when? I’ll need to learn that if I’m going to raise my children here so I can adapt your wisdom.”
“I honestly don’t know.” Her mother sighed heavily. Looking as if she’d aged ten years in the past ten minutes, she ambled toward the wall and the broken glass on the floor. As she bent to pick up the mess, Willow said, “Wait, Mom. Let me get a broom.”
“I have a pair of scissors in the junk drawer in the kitchen. Bring those, too, please.”
Willow couldn’t believe she was smiling as she left the media room. She hurried to the laundry room, where she retrieved a broom and dustpan. Then, spying three pairs of scissors in her mother’s neatly organized junk drawer, she grabbed two of them.
Returning to the media room, Willow stopped short. “Oh my God, Mom!”
Genevieve Prentice held her hands clasped against her breast. Her white cotton blouse was stained red with blood. She offered Willow a shaky smile and said, “Well, this day keeps getting better. Honey, will you drive me to the hospital, please? I’m going to need stitches.”