Angie looked from face to face. “What in the hell is going on?”
“Don’t you swear, Angela,” Mama said. She sounded tired. “Business at the restaurant is bad. I don’t see how we can keep going.”
“But … Papa loved it,” Angie said.
Tears sprang into her mother’s dark eyes. “You hardly need to tell me this.”
Angie looked at Livvy. “What’s wrong with the business?”
Livvy shrugged. “The economy is bad.”
“DeSaria’s has been doing well for thirty years. It can’t be—”
“I can’t believe you’re going to tell us how to run a restaurant,” Livvy snapped, lighting up a cigarette. “What would a copywriter know about it?”
“Creative director. And it’s running a restaurant, not performing brain surgery. You just give people good food at good prices. How hard can—”
“Stop it, you two,” Mira said. “Mama doesn’t need this.”
Angie looked at her mother, but didn’t know what to say. A family that only moments before had been the bedrock of her life felt suddenly cracked.
They fell into silence. Angie was thinking about the restaurant … about her papa, who had always been able to make her laugh, even when her heart had felt close to rending … and about the safe world where they’d all grown up together.
The restaurant was the anchor of their family; without it, they might drift away from one another. And that, the floating on one’s own tide, was a lonely way to live. Angie knew.
“Angie could help,” Mama said.
Livvy made a sound of disbelief. “She doesn’t know anything about the business. Papa’s princess never had—”
“Hush, Livvy,” Mama said, staring at Angie.
Angie understood everything in that one look. Mama was offering her a place to hide out away from the painful memories in this city. To Mama, coming home was the answer to every question. “Livvy is right,” Angie said slowly. “I don’t know anything about the business.”
“You helped that restaurant in Olympia. The success of your campaign made the newspapers,” Mira said, studying her. “Papa made us read all the clippings.”
“Which Angie mailed to him,” Livvy said, exhaling smoke.
Angie had helped put that restaurant back on the map. But all it had taken was a good ad campaign and some money for marketing.
“Maybe you could help us,” Mira said at last.
“I don’t know,” Angie said. She’d left West End so long ago, certain that the whole world awaited her. How would it feel to be back?
“You could live in the beach house,” Mama said.
The beach house.
Angie thought about the tiny cottage on the wild, windswept coast, and a dozen treasured memories came to her, one after another.
She’d always felt safe and loved there. Protected.
Maybe she could learn to smile again there, in that place where, as a girl, she’d laughed easily and often.
She looked around her, at this too-empty house that was so full of sadness; it sat on a block in a city that held too many bad memories. Maybe going home was the answer, for a while at least, until she figured out where she belonged now.
She wouldn’t feel alone at the cottage; not like she did in Seattle.
“Yeah,” she said slowly, looking up. “I could help out for a little while.” She didn’t know which emotion was sharper just then—relief or disappointment. All she knew was this: She wouldn’t be alone.
Mama smiled. “Papa told me you would come back to us someday.”
Livvy rolled her eyes. “Oh, great. The princess is coming back to help us poor country bumpkins run the restaurant.”
A week later Angie was on her way. She’d set off for West End in the way she started every project—full speed ahead. First, she’d called her boss at the advertising agency and asked for a leave of absence.
Her boss had stumbled around a bit, sputtering in surprise. There had been no indication at all that she was unhappy, none at all. If it’s a promotion you want—
She’d laughed at that, explaining simply that she was tired.
Tired?
She needed time off. And she had no idea how much. By the time the conversation had wound around to its end, she had simply quit. Why not? She needed to find a new life, and she could hardly do that clinging to the hemline of the old one. She had plenty of money in the bank and lots of marketable skills. When she was ready to merge back into the traffic of real life, she could always find another job.
She tried not to think about how often Conlan had begged her to do this very thing. It’s killing you, he always said. How can we relax if you’re always in overdrive? The doctors say …
She cranked up the music—something old and sweet—and pressed her foot down on the accelerator.
The miles sped past, each one taking her farther from Seattle and closer to the town of her youth.