Angie felt like an idiot. “Oh.”
“Come on in. I figured you’d be by.” She led the way down a linoleum-floored hallway and turned in to the family room, where a huge brown sectional framed a big-screen television. Two glasses of red wine waited on the oak coffee table.
Angie couldn’t help smiling. She sat down on the sofa and reached for the wineglass. “Where is everyone?”
“The little ones are asleep, the big ones are doing homework, and tonight is Vince’s league night.” Mira stretched out on the sofa, looking at Angie. “Well?”
“Well what?”
“You were just driving around in the dark?”
“Something like that.”
“Come on, Ange. Livvy quit. Mama threw down the lasagna gauntlet and the restaurant is bleeding.”
Angie looked up, trying to smile. “And don’t forget that I’m learning to live alone.”
“By the looks of it, that isn’t going well.”
“No.” She took a sip of wine. Maybe more than a sip. She didn’t really want to talk about her life. All it did was wound her. “I need to convince Livvy to come back.”
Mira sighed, obviously disappointed by Angie’s change in subject. “We probably should have told you that she’s wanted to quit for months.”
“Yeah. That would have been good to know.”
“Look on the bright side. There’s one less of us to piss off when you start making changes.”
For some reason, the word changes hit Angie hard. She put down the wineglass and stood up; then she moved to the window, staring out, as if her location had been the problem.
“Angie?”
“I don’t know what the hell is wrong with me lately.”
Mira came up beside her, touched her shoulder. “You need to slow down.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ever since you were a girl, you’ve been running for what you wanted. You couldn’t get out of West End quickly enough. Poor Tommy Matucci asked about you for two years after you left, but you never called him. Then you rushed through college and blistered up the food chain in advertising.” Her voice softened. “And when you and Conlan decided to start your family, you immediately started tracking your ovulation and working at it.”
“A lot of good it did me.”
“The point is, now you’re lost, but you’re still running full speed. Away from Seattle and your ruined marriage, toward West End and the failing restaurant. How will you ever figure out what you want when everything is a blur?”
Angie stared at her reflection in the window. Her skin looked parchment pale, her eyes seemed bruised by darkness, and her mouth was barely a strip. “What do you know about wanting?” she said, hearing the ache in her voice.
“I have four kids and a husband who loves his bowling league almost as much as he loves me, and I’ve never had a boss who wasn’t related to me. While you were sending me postcards from New York and London and Los Angeles, I was trying to save enough money to get my hair cut. Believe me, I know about wanting.”
Angie wanted to turn and face her sister but she didn’t dare. “I would have traded it all—the trips, the lifestyle, the career—for just one of those babies upstairs.”
Mira touched her shoulder. “I know.”
Angie finally turned and knew instantly it was a mistake.
Mira’s eyes were full of tears.
“I need to go,” Angie said, hearing the thickness of her voice.
“Don’t—”
She pushed past Mira and ran for the front door. Outside, rain slashed at her, blurred her vision. Not caring, she raced for the car. Mira’s Come back echoed behind her.
“I can’t,” she said, too softly for her sister to hear.
She climbed into the car and slammed the door, starting the engine and backing out before Mira could follow her.
She drove up one street and down another, barely aware of where she was. The radio volume was turned high. Right now Cher was singing at her to “Believe.”
At last she found herself in the Safeway parking lot, drawn like a moth to the bright lights.
There she sat beneath the glaring streetlamp, staring out at the rain hammering her windshield.
I would have traded it all.
She closed her eyes. Just saying those words aloud had hurt.
No.
She wouldn’t sit here and stew about it. Enough was enough. This was definitely the last time she’d vow to forget what couldn’t be changed.
She’d go into the store, buy some over-the-counter sleeping pills, and take just enough to get her through the night.
She got out of her car and went into the sprawling white-lit store. None of her family would be here, she knew. They patronized the locals.
She went straight to the aspirin aisle and found what she was looking for.
She was halfway to the checkout aisle when she saw them.
A bird-thin woman in dirty clothes carrying three cartons of cigarettes and a twelve-pack of beer. Four raggedly dressed children buzzed around her. One of them—the smallest—asked for a doughnut, and the mother cuffed him.