“I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Camilla ran a hand over her already perfect hair, then smoothed the front of her blouse. “I’m sorry for snapping. It’s just that my relationship with my mother was . . . complicated.”
“Is that why you never talk about her?”
“I don’t talk about her because there’s nothing to talk about. She paid for my schooling, exposed me to art and music, arranged for dance lessons, elocution lessons, lessons on which fork to use. Everything she was required to do—and nothing more.”
“You didn’t mention love,” Rory pointed out. “Were you loved?”
“I was groomed,” Camilla replied carefully. “Trained to live up to the position I’d been given as a Lowell, to do and be exactly what was expected of me.”
Something about her use of the word given made Rory bristle. She was starting to see why her mother avoided the subject of family. “And did you? Live up to it, I mean?”
“Almost never.”
The words hung between them as Rory stood studying her. It was startling to discover this unexpected chink in her mother’s armor, a raw place in her childhood that had never quite healed. Perhaps they could find common ground after all. “I’m sorry,” she said softly.
Camilla shook her head, her eyes clouded with emotion. She was hurting and doing her damnedest to pretend she wasn’t. “I didn’t mean it the way it came out. It was years ago, when I was just a girl. Everything’s a drama when you’re a little girl. Please forget I said it.”
Rory was torn between pressing her for more and letting the matter drop. Today’s clash had started like all the others, but something new had crept into the conversation. Something that might finally explain the tension always simmering just beneath the surface of their relationship.
“You don’t have to pretend with me,” she told Camilla, aware that she was repeating Soline’s words almost exactly. “It’s okay to be sad. Or mad. Or both.”
Camilla forced a smile. “It’s nothing. Really. Spilled milk, as they say.”
Rory reached for her hand. “We don’t have to talk about it now. We don’t ever have to talk about it if you don’t want to. But I’m here if you ever want someone to just listen.”
The doorbell rang before Camilla could answer, but her relief was plain. “You have company,” she said, reclaiming her hand. “I’ll go.”
“It’s just my dinner. Eggplant Parm and an antipasto from Gerardo’s. Stay. We can split it.”
Camilla shook her head, her face already shuttered as she sidled past. “I’m sure you have work to do. Enjoy your eggplant.”
“You’re not interfering. Stay and let me make up for this morning.”
“I’m fine,” she tossed over her shoulder as she opened the door and pushed past the startled delivery boy. “Fine. Really.”
Rory paid for her food and carried the bag to the kitchen, convinced that her mother was anything but fine.
EIGHTEEN
SOLINE
Every heart has a signature, a unique echo that ripples out into the world. And every echo has a match. When those echoes connect, they become so attuned that even if they be separated, they continue to seek one another.
—Esmée Roussel, the Dress Witch
23 June 1985—Boston
I stare out the window as I seed a tomato. Perhaps I’ll eat on the terrace and watch the sun go down. But even as the thought flits through my head, I know I won’t. I’m in one of my moods tonight, the kind that calls for an especially good bottle of wine. I reach for my glass and take a deep mouthful, still brooding over this morning’s conversation with Aurora.
I wanted to check on her, to make sure she was all right, and I’m glad I went. She needs looking after just now, and a little cherishing too. More, I think, than even she knows.
She was surprised when I told her she reminded me of myself, and a little embarrassed, too, to be seen so clearly. But I was telling the truth. The girl—she is still a girl to me—is in a dark place, a limbo of uncertainty and darkness, where no light can get through. She’s so much in love with her young man. Hux—what kind of name is that for a boy? But it’s what she calls him, so it’s how I’ll try to think of him too. He’s certainly a handsome one. American in all the best ways. And a good heart into the bargain. She’s lucky to have found him.
It’s true, I tell myself. She is. But I wonder. Can it really be called lucky to find someone whose heartbeat matches your own, only to lose them?