“I promise. Tell me about your day.”
She tells me about a walk she took, the café where she ate lunch, some weeding she did in my parents’ garden, the three oranges she picked, the book she finished reading. She says everything looks good with my dad. My mother is apparently bustling around getting a spare bedroom organized for his return home.
To anyone else, my mother’s attentiveness toward my father seems genuine and caring.
My fingers tighten on the phone. “How do you feel, Liv?”
“Fine, actually. Second trimester in a couple of weeks. Hard to believe.”
“Archer hasn’t…”
“Dean, it’s fine, I promise. I haven’t even seen him today.”
“Well, I’ll be back tomorrow, okay?”
“Not if it’s stormy. I want you to be safe.”
“I will be. Just can’t wait to get back to you.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Liv says. “Love you.”
“You too.”
I turn off the phone and go to bed, crashing into a dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Olivia
January 29
m glad you didn’t try and drive to the airport,” I tell Dean. “It looks like the roads are a mess. The news reports say all the emergency teams are on alert, and they’re advising people to stay home.”
“The airline can’t reschedule my flights yet,” he says. “I’ve called twice. I’ll try again later today.”
“Okay. Everything’s fine here.”
After I hang up the phone, I watch a few more news reports about the “big blizzard hitting the Midwest,” then go downstairs. With Dean gone, I’m more aware of the sounds in the West house. I hear the slightest noise—footsteps on the stairs, the front door opening, the low murmur of voices. And even the silence is strange, like a thin layer of ice stretched over waters still churning with waves.
Everything is quiet downstairs. Joanna West is sitting alone at the kitchen table. She is holding a cup of tea and looking out the front window at the driveway.
I pause in the doorway. Joanna usually has a rigidity to her, as if she’s holding herself together tightly, but now her expression is unguarded. I wonder for a second if I should leave her alone, but she turns to look at me. A coolness veils her eyes.
“Hello, Olivia.”
I step into the kitchen. I’ve spent very little time in Joanna West’s company without Dean there. I’m sure Joanna still blames me for taking Dean away, or at least for being the final reason he broke from his family.
I’m not all that fond of Joanna either, truth be told. She forced a nine-year-old Dean, her own young son, to bear the burden of a secret that was her damned fault. Then she blamed him when the truth came to light. She’s punished Dean for the last twenty-five years because he told Archer the truth.
The only thing that keeps me from hating her is the fact that she is Dean’s mother. For all the West family’s troubles, Dean became a man of integrity and honor. Not only did he know that he and I could change our lives, he knew how to make it happen. He taught me about love, trust, passion, and forgiveness. About hope.
Whatever Joanna West did wrong, her eldest son turned out astonishingly right.
I put the box of chocolates I bought on the kitchen counter. “I got these for you when I was out the other day.”
“Thank you.”
A movement out the kitchen window catches my eye. Archer is in the driveway, tossing a basketball into the hoop hanging on the garage. If I didn’t know it was him, he’d look like any other unkempt, lanky young man out on a pleasant morning. He shoots and misses.
“He’s always struggled,” Joanna says.
I watch Archer shoot again. The ball bounces off the backboard.
“Not like Dean,” she continues. “Dean was meant to be successful. Everything came so easily to him.”
Disbelief floods me. “I don’t think Dean would agree.”
“Oh, he’s worked hard. I know that. But I also know he has a natural facility. Both with people and complicated matters. Archer is far less self-assured.”
Considering this family’s history, that’s hardly a wonder. I look out at Archer, experiencing an unexpected sense of kinship with him. When you spend a great deal of your life unstable, the black sheep of your family… it’s not easy to feel as if you belong anywhere. I only did after I met Dean.
“He never knew.”
I look at Joanna. It takes me a second to realize she’s talking about Archer’s father.
“Oh.”
“He left town before I found out.” She’s still staring out the window at Archer. “I later realized that was a good thing. He might very well have made things messy if he’d known. Especially during the election when Richard was running to retain his seat.”
I don’t know what to say. It occurs to me that Archer might have no idea where his biological father is. Or even who he is.
“I’m sure everyone is glad Archer came back for a few days,” I say.