Her shoulder-length hair was more silver than blond. Deeper lines had forged into the skin around her brown eyes, and fine lines had formed around thinner lips. Mom had always been curvy—after all, that was where I got my hips and breasts, and belly, and, okay, thighs from—but she was at least twenty pounds lighter.
Concern blossomed in the pit of my stomach as she wrapped her arms around me. Had I not noticed this last year? Had I been gone too long? Ten years was a long time to miss things when you only saw someone sporadically.
“Honey,” Mom said, her voice thick. “Baby, I’m so happy to see you. So happy that you’re here.”
“Me too,” I whispered back, and I meant it.
Coming home had been the last thing I wanted to do, but as I hugged her tight and inhaled the vanilla scent of her perfume, I knew it had been the right thing, because that concern grew and spread throughout me.
Mom was only fifty-five, but age didn’t matter when it came to mortality. Nothing did when it came to death. I knew that better than anyone. Dad had died young, and ten years ago, at nineteen, I had . . . I had almost taken my last breath after everything else had been taken from me.
Chapter 2
The iron bistro table in front of the large window overlooking the veranda and garden had been in the kitchen as long as I could remember. Smoothing my hand over the surface, I found the tiny, familiar indentations carved around the edges. It was at this very table where I colored as a child and did homework in the evenings as a teenager.
The door to the old kitchen, which now served as a break room/storage room, was on the opposite end, also marked with an employees-only sign. That door, like everything else in the updated kitchen, had been painted a fresh white.
Mom brought two cups of coffee over and sat across from me. The room now smelled like a coffee store, and I wasn’t thinking about the way I’d freaked out before.
“Thank you,” I said, wrapping my hand around the warm cup. A grin tipped up the corners of my lips. Little green Christmas trees decorated the cup. Even though it was two weeks past Christmas and all the decorations were down, the Christmas-themed coffee cups would remain out and in use all year. Glancing around the kitchen, I frowned and asked, “Where is James?” James Jordan had been the chef for at least fifteen years. “I smell something cooking.”
“What you smell is two roasts.” She took a sip of her coffee. “And there’s been some changes. Guests have to notify us by one if they will be having dinner here and then we cook the dinner based on that request. It cuts down on the work and we’re not wasting as much food.” She paused. “James comes in just three times a week now. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday.” She lowered her cup to the table. “We’re still pretty steady with business, but with the newer hotels springing up around here every year, I have to be careful with what we’re spending money on. Do you remember me telling you about Angela Reidy?”
When I nodded, she continued, “She’s our main housekeeping staff in the mornings and afternoons Wednesday through Sunday, and Daphne is still here, but she’s getting up there in age, so I’ve moved her to part-time. That gives her more time with her grandbabies. Angela is amazing, but a little flighty and sometimes forgetful. She is always locking herself out of the townhouse she rents, so much so that she keeps a spare key in the back room.”
I let all of that sink in as I took a drink of the sugary coffee, just the way I loved it. Basically what Mom was saying was that she was doing most of this all by herself. That explained the deeper lines around her eyes, the new ones around her mouth, and the silvery tones to her blond hair. Running an inn or any business with a skeleton crew would take its toll on anyone, and I knew that the last ten years hadn’t been easy on her for a whole different set of reasons.
The same reasons they’d been hard for me.
Sometimes, not often, I was able to forget what had driven me away from my home. Those moments were few and far between, but when they happened, it was . . . the warmest sense of peace I’d ever felt. It was like the way it was before. Like I could pretend I was an ordinary woman with a career I sort of loved and a past that was common, boring even. It wasn’t that I hadn’t come to terms with everything that had happened . . . to my family and me. I had six years of intensive therapy to thank for that, but I still welcomed those moments when I forgot, and I was grateful for them.
“You’ve been doing all of this by yourself, Mom.” I placed my cup on the table and crossed my leg over my knee. “That’s a lot.”
“It’s . . . manageable.” Mom smiled, but it didn’t reach her whiskey-colored eyes. Eyes identical to mine. “But you’re home now. I won’t be doing this by myself.”
I nodded as my gaze dropped to the cup. “I should’ve come home—”
“Don’t say it.” Mom reached across the small table and folded her hand over mine. “You had a very good job—”
“My job was to basically babysit my boss to make sure he didn’t cheat on his third wife.” I paused, grinning. “Obviously, I wasn’t very good at it since number three is on her way out.”
She shook her head as she lifted her cup. “Honey, you were an executive assistant for a man who ran a multibillion-dollar consulting business. You had more responsibilities than making sure he kept it in his pants.”
I giggled.
The only thing that rivaled my former boss’ drive when it came to business was his drive to screw as many women as humanly possible. But what she said was true. Late nights at the office; dinner meetings; and a constant, ever-changing schedule with nonstop flights coast to coast and around the globe had been my life for five years. It had its pros and cons, and leaving my job hadn’t been a decision I’d made lightly. But my job had allowed me to save up some money that would make this transition into a much . . . slower life a little easier.
“You had a life in Atlanta,” she continued, and I raised a brow. My time had basically been Mr. Berg’s time. “And your life back here wasn’t easy to return to.”
I tensed. She wasn’t going to go there, was she? She squeezed my hand.
She was so going to go there.
“This town and all the memories weren’t easy for you to come back to, and I know that, honey. I know that.” She smiled again, but it was brittle. “So I understand how big of a deal this was for you. What you had to overcome just to make the decision to do this, and you’re doing it for me. Don’t belittle what you’re doing right now.”
Oh God, I was going to start crying again.
Yes, I was doing this for her, but I was . . . I was also doing it for myself.
I slipped my hand free and nearly gulped down the coffee before I burst into tears and face-planted onto the iron table like I’d done way too many times in the past.