Anything for Her

chapter ELEVEN



NOLAN CALLED NOT long after Allie had gotten up in the morning and apologized because he had to cancel on her today. He had an emergency rush on a job, he told her; he’d be holding up the contractor until he produced the countertops.

Allie didn’t have any reason to doubt that he was telling her the truth, but he sounded more reserved than usual. Maybe somebody was with him, she tried to convince herself, but didn’t believe it. Could Mom have said things while they were alone together that contradicted what she had told him?

She hadn’t slept well last night. She grimaced at the thought. Okay, she had hardly slept at all last night. How could she go on like this?

I have to tell him.

But she’d promised to talk to her mother first. She’d do that. It was lucky he had canceled today. She would go to Mom’s tonight and argue for the right to open their lives to Nolan. At least now Mom had met him. She’d know how solid and trustworthy he was.

Anxiety continued to ride her all day, though. She did some errands because she had to fill her time somehow, then settled down to try to piece her new quilt. But after stitching a row of tiny triangles on her machine, snipping the thread and turning to her ironing board to press out the seams and cut them apart, she stared in shock at the blue fabric—which was supposed to be background, not rocking horse. She obviously hadn’t been thinking at all when she’d been cutting or sewing.

“Wow.” She picked up the bundle of sewn squares and dropped it in the trash. Either she had to start over, or do something else. “I vote for something else,” she told her quiet apartment.

She’d quilt instead. Her hands knew what to do. With only diagonal lines, working on Sean’s quilt would take no mental function whatsoever.

As always, she was soothed by the act of quilting. The tiny stitches, the precision, the rocking motion, the way each completed block filled some emptiness in her, too, calmed her. She continued until her back ached, her fingers started to cramp and, despite the leather thimble, she’d punctured her fingertip a few too many times.

Midafternoon she made herself have a bowl of soup, all she could stomach. Despite the mist that wasn’t quite rain, she went for a run later. By the time she showered and dried her hair, she only had another hour to kill before her mother should be home from work.

Maybe she should call in advance, but she didn’t want to. She needed to catch her mother unprepared.

When she rang the bell and her mother opened the door, Allie saw that she’d accomplished more than she had expected. Mom looked more than surprised.

“Allie? Is something wrong?”

“I wanted to talk to you. Is now okay?”

“I was putting dinner on, but...of course it is. Come in. Have you eaten?”

“I’m not hungry.”

She followed her mother to the kitchen, where she turned off a burner then faced Allie.

“What is it?”

“You know I’m not a very good liar.”

Fear. Oh, yes, her mother was afraid. “What are you telling me?” she whispered.

“I’ve said things to Nolan and Sean that I shouldn’t.” The burning in her chest had to be heartburn. “I’m so muddled now, I don’t even remember what I’ve said.”

“Did I contradict you?” Mom pressed her fingers to her lips.

“Yes.” Allie shook her head. “No. That’s not the point. Mom, I have to tell him everything.”

Her mother’s eyes dilated with shock. “You can’t! You know you can’t.”

“I love him.” Allie crossed her arms, all but hugging herself. “I can’t keep lying like this. I can’t.”

Her mother shuddered. “I don’t understand what’s happening to you. You know the risks. We’ve all known from the beginning that we have to live the lives we’ve been given. It’s foolish and dangerous to try to reclaim any part of what we left behind.

“You’ve spent your entire adult life as Allie Wright. That is who you are! There is absolutely no reason Nolan ever has to know that a long time ago you had a different name.”

“Two different names.”

“Two,” Mom agreed. Her voice was gaining strength. She’s regaining her confidence she can wear me down, Allie realized. “You’re the same person inside, sweetheart. That’s who he loves. If he does.”

Allie stared at her. “You think he doesn’t? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Of course not! How would I know? Has he told you he loves you? Has he asked you to marry him? Is that what set this off?”

“No, he hasn’t asked. But what if he does, Mom? Am I really going to marry a man who believes all kinds of untruths about me? How could I raise children to be honest if I’m a big fat liar?”

“You’re getting hysterical.” Mom stepped forward to put an arm around her.

Allie lurched back. “What is it you think Nolan will do? Put in a call to the Moretti family and ask whether it’s true that Joanna Marr used to work for them, only she testified in court against one of their enforcers, and, oh, by the way, she lives in Washington State now under the name Cheryl Wright?”

“Why don’t we walk outside and be sure the neighbors can hear,” her mother said furiously. “Is that what you want?”

“No!” Allie yelled. “What I want is to tell the truth to one man. I want him to know me. Why is that too much to ask?”

Her mother stared at her without saying anything for a long time. She seemed to have aged ten years in the past ten minutes. “You’re the one person in the world I’ve always been able to depend on,” she said finally, her bewilderment obvious. “I never dreamed...” She broke off.

Allie’s sinuses felt hot. Her mother saw this as a betrayal. Was it? Something hurt in her couldn’t let go, though. “Did you assume I’d never marry? That you’d never have to worry about me wanting to...to trust someone else this much?”

“How can you say that?” Mom’s voice was constricted, wounded. “Of course I wanted you to have a full life! What I didn’t expect was that you’d believe you had to risk our lives to prove to a man that you loved him.”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what is it? Make me understand.”

They finally sat down in the living room. Allie tried to explain her confusion. “As Allie Wright, I’m not whole. Because I am Chloe, too, and even Laura. Don’t you see? You were an adult when all this happened. The different names were only labels for you. You were whole. I never had the chance.”

Mom didn’t get it, she could tell. What Allie didn’t know was why. Was she so fixated on her fear that the boogeyman would come after them, she couldn’t see how unlikely it was? Or was she completely unable to see that her daughter was very different from her?

Allie sat looking at her mother and had an unsettling moment. They’d always been so close, depending on each other. She’d have sworn they knew each other. What she should be asking herself now was whether Mom had ever really known her. But instead she thought, Do I really know her?

For the first time in forever, she remembered watching her mother during that long-ago week in Florida, when her parents had argued in bursts, cutting off each time they realized one of their kids had come within hearing distance. Even outside of her own fear and disbelief at what they were arguing about, she’d been perplexed because Mom seemed different. And...she never went back to being the same Mom she’d been before.

Dad had been angry, frustrated, then ultimately stunned. She, though, had had an air of suppressed excitement. She seemed to carry herself taller, to fill more space. In fact, all the changes they underwent made Dad smaller and Mom larger. Had she liked that? Allie asked herself now. Was it possible her mother had been unhappy before, unsatisfied with who she was or with her life, and was secretly thrilled to grab at an entirely new self—a heroine? Or was it only the pride Allie had believed it to be?

Dear God, Allie thought, I hope that was it.

Could her parents’ marriage have been in trouble already, before her mother stayed late at work that day and overheard the conversation that shattered their lives? It struck Allie now that her father had never talked to her and her brother, not apart from their mother, about what was going to happen to all of them. He was there, sometimes, but stayed quiet, letting his wife take the lead and explain. He’d never talk about it later, either. What did he think about how Mom changed?

Maybe I never really knew either of them.

Maybe her mother had never shared the disorientation the rest of them felt, or even the grief.

It was weird how memories could cascade. Suddenly she remembered how when they were at Nanna’s she’d often hear sharp voices from the kitchen. Nanna had loved traditions, but Mom thought they were ridiculous. Allie discovered now that she’d captured a picture of Nanna’s expression as she watched her daughter. It had been so very sad.

Mom, Allie remembered, hadn’t liked Nanna’s tatted snowflakes at all and had put them on the Christmas tree after a snapped “Oh, I suppose her feelings would be hurt if we didn’t.”

Allie had grieved when they left, knowing she’d never again see this grandmother, whom she loved so much. But Mom hadn’t actually liked her own mother that much.

Not more than a minute had passed. Allie’s mother watched her with distress and a lot of other emotions Allie couldn’t read at all. Not that long ago, she would have been blithely certain she knew what her mother thought and felt. But I was wrong. So wrong, she thought, dazed.

Or...maybe I’m wrong now.

How was she supposed to know?

This was her mother, she reminded herself. Her one certainty. The only person whose love she knew was unshakable. That much was true, even if a whole lot else she’d always believed wasn’t.

Maybe she hadn’t explained herself very well.

“Mom, you met Nolan. Does he seem like someone who’d be untrustworthy?”

“That’s not the point. It’s not that he’d deliberately set out to give away what you told him. But you know how easily it could happen. He lives with a teenager. Sean could overhear a few words and tell his friends. Or put it up on Facebook. Or one of them might. The world isn’t as small as it used to be.”

That was true, of course. And I already told Sean something I shouldn’t.

A something that wasn’t very important, because it was about Laura Nelson, not Chloe Marr. And, although the U.S. Marshals had worried that someone might be close to uncovering their identity, that hadn’t really happened. Obviously, Dad and Jason were fine. They still lived openly in Tulsa, and no one had stuck a gun to Dad’s head and demanded to know where his wife had gone. Hastily relocating Mom and Allie might not have been necessary at all.

Mom, she thought, feeling sick, had almost seemed excited again. As if the fact that she might be in danger made her feel important.

Horrified at herself, Allie wanted to take back her speculation. She knew her mother better than that! She’d been devastated when Jason decided to stay behind, too. She had held Allie and cried. “What would I ever do without you?” she’d whispered.

What if I said now, “Mom, do you ever think maybe you’re not that important? Do you really think anybody still searches the internet for clues to where you are? After fifteen years?”

But she knew she couldn’t say any of that.

“Mom, I think this is something I need to do,” she said instead, voice quivering.

Her mother’s face spasmed. “And I’m begging you not to. I think I deserve enough of your loyalty to ask that much.”

Allie felt herself go numb inside. However much her foundations had shifted, she did love her mother. The realization that she couldn’t choose Nolan over Mom would leave her desolate if she let it.

She stood up. “All right. You win. I’ll try—” Her throat closed up. She absolutely could not finish. Could not say, I’ll try to believe he and I can be happy with me lying to him constantly. Could not say, I’ll try to believe I can be a complete person despite the fact that the first seventeen years of my life have been severed from me.

Could not say, I’ll try to keep loving you as much as I always have, even though I think you just manipulated me and guilted me and never really tried to understand how I feel.

“I need to go home.” She started for the door, only then remembering she’d set down her purse in the kitchen and diverted that way. “I’m sorry.”

“I wish you’d stay for dinner.” Sounding unhappy, Mom followed her. “I know you’re not eating enough. And I can tell you don’t understand.”

“I think you’re wrong.” Thank God, there was her purse. Allie grabbed it and kept going. “But I do understand why you’re scared, Mom, and I guess I have to respect that. And I really, really don’t want to talk any more about it tonight, okay?” She fumbled to get the front door open.

“All right. But...could we have lunch one day this week?”

Allie risked a look back and saw only her mother. Her best friend.

“Of course we can,” she said, gently even though she felt...not much at all.

Their good-nights weren’t all that different from usual. Driving home, Allie tried to convince herself that nothing really had changed, and that her mother was right. Nolan could love her without ever knowing her secrets.

* * *

SOMEHOW SHE WASN’T at all surprised when the bell above the door tinkled at precisely 1:15 the next afternoon and, when she turned from where she’d been replacing a bolt of fabric on the rack, she saw that it was Nolan who had walked into her otherwise empty store, a couple of bags of food in his hands.

“You finished your job?” she asked.

“Yeah. I missed you yesterday.”

“I missed you, too.” Her voice sounded weird. A little scratchy.

He didn’t say anything for a minute, but he looked into her eyes with unnerving intensity. “Did you?” he said finally.

She willed herself not to overreact. She might be imagining the undertones here. “I got a lot of work done on Sean’s quilt. I might have it ready for him in as soon as a couple of weeks.”

“Seriously?”

“You doubt me?” Allie was proud of her mock offended stance.

He should have smiled and said of course I don’t. Instead, there was an odd little silence, during which his very blue eyes contemplated her. “I brought lunch,” he said at last, abruptly.

Okay, she wasn’t imagining anything. There was definitely something wrong. Would he tell her what it was? Allie couldn’t even guess.

“I especially appreciate it today,” she told him lightly. “I forgot to bring anything.”

He followed when she went to the back. “You’re losing weight, aren’t you?”

“Maybe a little. I always tend to be skinny.”

“Not skinny.” He frowned. “Delicate.”

“That’s a more flattering word.” She took a chance, rose on tiptoe and kissed his cheek. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Yeah.” He set down the bags and tugged her against him for a more thorough kiss. “I’m glad I am, too.”

He distributed today’s lunch, take-out bowls of split pea soup and sourdough rolls that smelled as if they were right out of the oven, then asked if she’d done anything special yesterday.

Confronted my mother. “Nope. Like I said, mostly quilted.”

He pried the top off his bowl. “You may have gotten your coloring from your dad, but I could see your mom in you.”

“Yes. I got my size from her for sure.”

“More than that.”

“I suppose so.” She hesitated. “Do you look like your mother?”

“No.” He cleared his throat. “Not at all.”

“I’m sorry.”

Nolan frowned and didn’t respond. He appeared to be concentrating on buttering his roll.

“Sean told me something,” he said finally.

Allie slowly lifted her gaze to his. “What?” she croaked.

“That you said you moved here from Oklahoma.” Pause. “Not Montana.”

She was nearly paralyzed, unable to think. She was already tangled in this lie. How did she get out? “That’s true,” she said. “Mom was... She always says that. We, um, did live in Montana. Before. But, well, Dad and Jason are still in Oklahoma, and she doesn’t like to think about it, and so...she leaves out the time we spent in Oklahoma.” Oh, God, that was weak. Would he buy it?

The relentlessness she saw in his eyes said plainly that he didn’t. “Where in Oklahoma?” he asked. “My sister dated a guy from somewhere near Oklahoma City. Choctaw, I think.”

“We were just outside Tulsa. A suburb.”

“Oh? Which one?”

Of course he wasn’t letting up at all. The steel in his voice told her any more evasions would be the end.

Neither Dad nor Jason were in the same town where she’d graduated from high school, though they’d stayed in the area. It wouldn’t matter if she told Nolan; there was nothing to find there anymore.

“Fairfield. Nothing distinctive about it, not even the name.” She summoned a smile. “I learned later there are Fairfields all over the country. And, like I told Sean, it wasn’t cowboy country.”

“Fairfield.” He nodded, his gaze momentarily distant as if he was filing the name away for future reference. Then it refocused like a laser. “What happened that made your mother so bitter?”

“I’m...not altogether sure. I think—” Daddy, I’m so sorry! “—that he might have had an affair. But somehow their split involved Jason. I think he lied to cover for my father. He wouldn’t tell me.” She was talking too fast, she knew she was, but he’d never have believed a simple “I don’t know.”

“Your...loyalty to her is commendable. But do you think it’s fair that she expects you to cut your father and brother out of your life because that’s what she decided to do?” The words sounded sympathetic, but his expression didn’t match. It could only be described as calculating.

“I was always closer to her,” Allie said simply. “There was no choice for me. And my brother and I reacted differently to everything.” That was true. “He got angry and rebellious as a teenager.” Also true, so true. She had admired him for his willingness to rage aloud, something she’d been too stunned and confused to do. “He quit talking to me. Accused me of being a little Goody Two-shoes, going along with whatever Mom said.”

Until this moment, she hadn’t understood how right he was. That was what she’d always done. And she’d done it again last night—let her mother make a decision that should have been hers alone.

Except...maybe not. It was her mother a New York mob family had promised to kill, not Allie. That was something she couldn’t forget.

Nolan’s expression softened, as much as his angular face would allow. “He hurt you.”

She lifted one shoulder in an almost-apologetic shrug. “Not that much. By then I was so mad at him I didn’t care as much as I probably should have what he thought of me.” Her mouth twisted. “My family was a mess. It’s been peaceful, having only Mom and me.”

“I guess you and I have that in common, don’t we?” His eyes were warm again, not calculating at all. “We’ve run away from family.”

“Yes, except in my case I trailed along behind my mother. You had the courage to do it yourself.”

Me, I’ve never done anything but trail along behind my mother, not since they yanked me away from my life. And that, Allie supposed, summed it all up: dance was her life, and once she lost it, she’d never regained any sense of place or identity or meaning.

Except for quilting. Her head turned, and she took in the shop. The rainbow of colors, the glossy wood floors and creamy walls and the beautiful quilts hung, some for display, some for sale. The board that listed classes, the row of sewing machines in back, the long table and her quilt frame.

Yes, she did have a purpose and identity now. I am a quilt maker. But the finding of that identity had been slow. She hadn’t even fully understood until now how important it had been for her to find something that fulfilled her.

“Not courage,” Nolan denied. “I was tired of family pressure and tension, that’s all.”

“Do you have pictures of them?”

He looked surprised. “You mean in my wallet? Maybe old ones. Not my mother and father.” He shifted on his seat to pull out his wallet. After a minute of thumbing through it, he removed a tattered photo. “Man, that’s from a long time ago. Prom,” he added unnecessarily, and kept digging through a miscellany of worn receipts, business cards and who knew what.

Allie took the photo, feeling a funny cramp in her stomach at the thought that maybe he was showing her a picture of himself and his date at prom. But no. The boy in the picture definitely wasn’t Nolan. Looking closely at the girl, Allie thought she could see a resemblance to Nolan. Her bone structure was too strong for her to be called pretty. Yes, the cheekbones did have something in common with his. She had strawberry-blond hair, though, and a scattering of freckles across her nose. She was tall and skinny. Her expression suggested she wasn’t comfortable in the typical too-feminine prom dress and awkward heels, with her pale red hair up in some complicated do decorated with flowers.

“Anna?” Allie assumed.

He’d found another photo. He handed it over and took the one from her hand. He laughed softly, looking at his sister. “Yeah. She grumbled all afternoon getting ready. I kept saying, ‘You don’t have to go,’ and she’d snap, ‘Yes, I do and you know why.’”

“Why?”

“There was this bitch at school who headed the popular clique and loved nothing better than belittling everyone else. I think it got so she was Anna’s personal nemesis. She predicted—loudly—that no one would ask Anna to prom. By that time Anna was asserting her calling as an artist partly by wearing sacky jeans or even overalls stained by clay or glazes all the time. Clunky boots. Flannel shirts.” Nolan smiled, remembering.

“My little sister. Mouthy, abrasive, didn’t take any shit from anyone. Now, she wouldn’t let some stuck-up airhead get to her, but she was a teenager, after all. She had some guys who were buddies, and bullied one of them into taking her to prom. I think they stayed all of a couple of hours, breathed a sigh of relief and went home.” He set down the photo. “Anna’s...well, not a beauty, but closer now. The men like her, anyhow. She’s always got one around.”

Lifting the other picture, Allie recognized it as a senior photo. Nolan’s brother appeared terribly young and yet didn’t have that unfinished look either his sister or Nolan did. He was conventionally handsome, his brown hair lying smooth, his smile for the camera confident and unshadowed.

“He really doesn’t look like you,” she said, handing it back. “Or Anna, does he?”

“No. Jed takes after our...his father. Anna and I...who knows? Except her coloring comes from Mom. Her eyes, too, I guess.”

“You don’t think you might have the same father? It seems as if you have the same bone structure.”

“I doubt it.” But he studied the photo again for a moment before carefully tucking both back into his wallet and restoring it to his hip pocket.

She might have argued had his tone not been so final. Because he knew something about one or the other of their fathers? Because he didn’t want to know? Or because he hated the idea that his mother might keep going back to the same man even more than he hated the idea of serial affairs?

“Do you have a picture of your brother?” he asked. Which she supposed was a natural question.

“I...actually do,” she admitted. “His prom picture. What an awful moment for all of us to be frozen in time.”

She went to get it from her purse, locked behind the counter. There wasn’t any reason she shouldn’t show it to Nolan, was there? She couldn’t think of one. She also kept a picture of her father in her wallet and couldn’t think of any reason not to show Nolan that one, too.

He took them from her with such care, it was obvious he thought she was giving him a gift in sharing them with him. That made her ashamed. He hadn’t hesitated to take out the pictures of his sister and brother, while having to pry every nugget of information about her family from her.

He studied both photos for a long time, as if fascinated. “You do look more like your mother,” he said at last. “Except for the coloring. Both you and your brother—Jason?—got that from your dad.”

The bell over the door rang and she turned her head to see that a couple of women had come in. They weren’t regulars. She stood and called, “Hi, I’ll be right with you.”

Nolan returned the pictures to her with what she thought was reluctance. “I’d better get back to work, and let you do the same.”

“Thank you for bringing lunch,” she said.

“I wanted to see you.” He glanced toward the women, who had their backs turned, and kissed Allie. “I’ll call,” he said roughly.

She tried to smile. “Please.”

“Allie, I wish I thought...” He shook his head. “Never mind. This isn’t the time.” He nodded toward the customers. “I’ll clean up. Go on.”

She did, but was very aware when he left a minute later without saying anything else to her. The panic that felt like a small bird trapped in her chest was with her every time she saw him lately, and every time he left and she had to wonder if she’d given away anything new this time.

Fairfield. She had admitted to that, but couldn’t see how it mattered. Although Mom wouldn’t be happy.

Quite suddenly she had a headache. Her stomach felt queasy, too, and she began to regret the soup.

I don’t know if I can keep doing this.

But she’d continue to feel as if she was being torn in two as long as she and Nolan were together.

She saw her mother’s face. Heard her say, You’re the one person in the world I’ve always been able to depend on.

And then Nolan, implacable, asking, Where in Oklahoma?

Allie had to close her eyes against the pain that stabbed her temple.