“Watch it!” he exclaimed.
She slammed on the brakes. After all her bragging about being a better driver, she’d nearly rear-ended a Chevy Malibu.
He seemed to believe that continuing their relationship after the tour ended was a simple matter. It probably was to him, but she knew better. Sex changed everything. As unlikely as it would have seemed three weeks ago, The Diva and the quarterback were weirdly compatible. He was a special man—his humor, his loyalty, his decency—and he was as driven as she. He didn’t see the complication of extending their relationship, but he wouldn’t be the one handing over pieces of himself—little pieces at first, and then bigger ones, until she was once again lost.
She checked the GPS. They were nearly there. As she passed a plumbing truck doddering along in the right lane, she promised herself she’d enjoy every moment of their short, sex-fueled affair, and then she’d let him go. Since they’d never really been together, it wouldn’t even be an official breakup, and it would be easy to get through. She could only have one focus. Getting her voice back. Her goal from the beginning of her career was set in stone. To be the best, the stuff of legends, one of the immortals. She wouldn’t let anything derail her.
*
The bakery occupied the end of a strip mall that also included a tile store and a dog groomer. She pulled into a spot close enough to see the window, but not directly in front. Thad checked out the vintage sign hanging from a bracket over the front door. “My Lady’s Bakery?”
“Adam’s grandfather named it. He thought it sounded genteel.” A mess of plastic pennants were draped at the top of the window, and the artificial wedding cake at the center of the display looked particularly unappetizing, even from a distance. “It didn’t used to be this bad,” she said. “It was never exactly cutting-edge, but . . .”
“You’re not going to take responsibility for their bad window display, are you?”
“It seems symbolic. As if his sisters have given up now that Adam’s gone.” She saw the concern written on his too-handsome face. “I have to do this alone.” His jaw set in that stubborn line she was coming to know so well. She set her hand on his thigh. “I’ll be fine.”
He wasn’t happy, but he didn’t argue.
She approached the bakery’s door. The plaster roses on the wedding cake had lost some petals and the groom was missing a hand.
She’d learned a lot about Adam’s family during the time they were together. Neither of his older sisters had married or even dated much. They, along with their mother, were too busy focusing on the unexpected baby brother who’d arrived ten years after Brenda was born and nine years after her sister Colleen.
Their father was largely absent during Adam’s early years. He’d arrive at the bakery at four in the morning, work all day, and fall asleep after dinner, a schedule that resulted in a fatal heart attack when Adam was five. His mother and sisters took over the bakery, but Adam, with his magical voice, was always exempt from duties. Boys needed their sleep, so he was never required to get up early to tend a hot oven. His piano and voice lessons were more important than scrubbing heavy baking sheets or waiting on customers behind the counter. He was their crown prince, and they gave him everything they denied themselves.
Instead of resenting him, his teenage sisters set aside every dollar they could spare to help send him to Eastman, one of the best music colleges in the country. Even after their mother’s death, they still continued to dote on him. He was their life purpose. The only way their lives could have meaning was if he became successful, and they expected Olivia to make sacrifices just as they had. Now they wanted her to pay for failing him.
She took a deep breath and turned the knob.
The late afternoon’s unsold baked goods sat on paper doilies in the glass display case: a few black-and-white cookies, muffins, some cupcakes decorated to look like Cookie Monster. Everything palatable; nothing imaginative.
Both sisters were working behind the counter. Brenda glanced up as Olivia came in, and her welcoming shopkeeper’s expression vanished. Colleen was taking a cake from the case. As she spotted Olivia, she shoved it back inside so hard it slipped off its doily. “What do you want?”
What, indeed? Now that Olivia was here, she couldn’t think of anything to say.
They resembled Adam in different ways. His more sculptured features had become blurred in Brenda—as if someone had run an eraser over her face, leaving her with lost cheekbones, a short, unfinished nose, and small eyes turned down at the corners. Colleen had Adam’s dark brown eyes, but everything else was more angular: sharply pointed chin and nose, inclined eyebrows, rigid mouth. They both seemed to have used the same drugstore hair dye, a shade of red that stripped their short hair of any sheen.
Olivia stuffed her hands in the pockets of her trench coat. Her fingers brushed a crumpled tissue and the edge of her cell phone. “Adam used to talk about how hard both of you worked to keep him in voice lessons,” she said. “He felt guilty about it.”
Brenda’s insignificant chin came up. “We didn’t regret a moment of it.”
A pot banged in the back of the bakery. Colleen splayed her hands against her apron. “He was always good to us. Always.”
Olivia knew Adam frequently sent them money, although if he was short of cash, the money had come from Olivia. When he’d died, Olivia had made a private arrangement with the funeral home to take care of the expenses. The sisters believed Adam’s last opera company had paid for it.
She stepped closer to the counter and pointed stupidly toward the bakery case. “I’ll take whatever you have left.” She had no money on her. She’d left her purse in the car.
“We’re not selling to you,” Colleen said.
Olivia’s chest tightened. Even if she’d been standing on one foot with Thad holding her other foot, she wouldn’t have been able to get a note out. “I couldn’t make Adam happy,” she finally said.
“You broke his heart!” Brenda cried.
“I didn’t mean to.” Only in retrospect did Olivia see that Adam was suffering from depression. She remembered how difficult it had become for him to memorize a new libretto. The way his periods of insomnia had alternated with nights he’d sleep for twelve or thirteen hours. If only she’d gotten him to a doctor.
Colleen whipped around from behind the counter, her sharp features vicious. “You always had to come first. It was always Olivia this, Olivia that. It was never about him.”
“That’s not true. I did everything I could for him.”
“All you did was rub your success in his face,” Brenda retorted.
That wasn’t true, either. Olivia had made herself smaller for him, giving up her own practice time, downplaying her achievements, but there was no point in arguing with them. No point to this visit. “I’ve been getting some ugly letters,” she said. “I want them to stop.”
“What kind of letters?” The raw hatred in Colleen’s eyes, so like Adam’s, made Olivia feel sick.
Brenda seemed almost smug. “Whatever’s happening, you’ve brought it on yourself.”