I forgot all about Meadow.
That, as it turned out, was a mistake.
Chapter Three
Maya
Two weeks before my scheduled release from rehab, my therapist calls me into her office. I have repeatedly asked for a male therapist, but they’ve made me stick with women because evidently I have some issues with men I need to work on. At first I tried to resist her, but it was like keeping your walls up against Mrs. Claus. She has a small nose and round-frame glasses and a neat pageboy haircut that’s entirely white. You could get away with thinking she’s a pushover, but behind those glasses are eyes as sharp and steely blue as Paul Hollywood’s.
“How are you, Maya?” she asks, settling in her chair, a red-velvet wingback that I lust for and have put on my list.
Curled in the overstuffed, oversize chair where I’ve grown so comfortable the past eleven weeks, I’m pretty sure she’s going to break more details of my legal trouble, which has been on hold while I’m here.
“What’s up?” I ask, crossing my arms almost without thinking, then unfolding them on purpose. “Am I going to jail after all?”
“No,” she says firmly, but there’s something in the way she raises her eyes that makes me realize her news is worse than jail. She folds her hands in front of her. An amethyst ring shines the same color as the print of a jacaranda tree behind her on the wall. “I have some bad news.”
A surge of terror rises up through my esophagus, and for a fleeting second, all the faces I love pass in front of my eyes. “What?”
“Your father has died.”
“My dad?” I peer at her. My father is the most robust, alive person I have ever met. “How?”
“They think it was probably a heart attack, something they call a widow-maker—very fast and deadly.”
I let go of a snort. “That’s rich, since he divorced them all too fast to leave a widow.” She says nothing and I duck my head, looking at my fingers laced together in my lap. “Sorry—sarcasm.”
“Good catch. What’s beneath it?”
I take a breath and look toward the windows. Pale-green leaves make a pattern of light and shadow against the glass. “Numbness,” I say, and push deeper. “It’s not like we had a relationship.”
“Mmm. And yet he paid the non-insubstantial fees for your stay here.”
I shrug. “Guilt.”
“Maybe.”
An unexpected pain twists my belly. “I was so looking forward to having it out with him.”
She nods.
I think of his laughter, the big sound of it, and how much I adored that as a child. “I’ll never see him again.”
“No.”
Somewhere in my body there must be some grief, but right this second I can’t find it. I hold my arms across my gut and wait. “Is there more?”
She shakes her head gently. “Do you want to stay in rehab or get out and be with your family?”
“Oh.” I look at my hands. They’re so clean, unlike the days when I worked with dirt and grapes and wine. “I don’t know.”
“How are you feeling about your sobriety?”
Rehab is safe. I’m protected here from temptation, from high emotion, from everything out there that might derail me. Meadow’s face comes to me. This will be hard on her. I think of my sister. Harder still on her. “Good enough, I think. My stepmom and sister will need me.”
She nods. Regards me another long, soft minute. “If you’ll go to ninety meetings in ninety days, I’ll sign the release.”
It feels both aggravating and like a promise of some possible safety. “Okay.”
Slowly walking back toward my room, I wait for emotion to well up, rise, fill my body.
But there’s nothing.
Chapter Four
Norah
Of course Meadow banishes me. The night of Augustus’s death she comforted me, made me tea, tucked me into bed. It was a great kindness.
Two days later she arrives at the back door of Belle l’été at eight in the morning, her wild red hair caught back into a braid, her dog Elvis at her heels. In her hands is a thick ring of keys.
I’ve had only one cup of coffee and haven’t even eaten any toast or a bowl of cereal. Too late, I realize that I’m wearing a pair of Augustus’s boxer briefs. Her eyes flicker over them, showing nothing, but how would she even know they were his? They’re pink plaid. Not exactly what you’d think a man like him would wear. I know I look like hell from crying, and I don’t think I’ve had a shower since I heard the news. “Meadow,” I say, and swing the door open to let her in. She breezes by, smelling of grass and oranges. “What’s up?”