She’s still watching me. She knows. I can feel it, as if she has some maternal instinct about me now that she never had when I was younger.
“It was more than a scare, wasn’t it?” she asks. “How far along were you?”
How does she know? How can she tell?
I can’t lie, not about this. Not even to her. And what would be the point, anyway?
“Ten weeks,” I tell her.
“When did it happen?”
“End of January.”
“And your husband left right afterward?” Crystal asks.
“No, he did not leave right afterward.” I crack an egg into a hot pan and watch it sizzle. “I really don’t want to talk about this, Crystal.”
She pours herself a cup of coffee and sits down. We’re both silent as I bring my plate to the table. The air between us feels as fragile as a soap bubble.
With the overhead light on, Crystal’s eyelashes make half-moon shadows on her cheekbones. She still has a sprinkle of freckles across her nose, which has always added to her youthful, wholesome beauty. I realize that my eyes are shaped like hers, just brown instead of blue. She meets my gaze.
The invisible soap bubble seems to pop, the current between us breaking.
“I know she left you a lot of money,” Crystal says.
I poke at my toast. I shouldn’t feel guilty, but I do.
“How did you find out?” I ask.
“I asked the lawyer for a copy of her will,” she says. “My mother left me nothing, and she left you thousands of dollars. I’m sure she had a good laugh over that.”
I can feel her watching me. We share a surname, Elizabeth, Crystal, and Olivia, all of us Winter women. Crystal had given me her last name rather than my father’s because she’d wanted me to belong only to her.
“You didn’t tell me about the inheritance,” she says. “Why?”
“It didn’t seem necessary.”
“Did you think I’d be upset?”
“I don’t know, Crystal. I’ve barely seen you in the past sixteen years. I didn’t even know your mother. I get this letter that she’s died and left me all this money, and then out of nowhere you show up on my doorstep… what should I think?”
“You shouldn’t think what you obviously do.” Her voice is getting chilly. “You think I want the money she left you.”
“You’ve asked me for money before,” I point out.
“I’ve asked you for help,” she replies. “And I don’t want her money. Not after what she did to both of us.”
I wonder if that means she wants my money, not that I have much to give her.
“It doesn’t matter, in any case,” I say. “I’ve already invested most of it in the café, and the rest is set aside for working capital. It’s all spoken for.”
“Sounds like you put it to good use.”
“And I don’t have much else. I don’t have access to Dean’s money.” Which is a lie, but she doesn’t need to know that.
“Keeps you on a tight leash, does he?”
“No. I’m just telling you I don’t have much money right now.”
“I didn’t come here to ask you for money, Liv.”
“Why did you come here, then?”
“Because I wanted to see you. I thought we could… never mind.”
We both fall silent. And beneath my frustration blooms the tiny hope that has been buried inside me for over fifteen years.
The hope that one day, Crystal Winter would be the kind of mother I’d always longed for. All those years I lived with Aunt Stella, battling the humiliation of what happened at Fieldbrook, struggling to start again, to get back on my feet… it was always there, this kernel of hope that Crystal would contact me, want to see me, apologize, ask to start again, confess that she missed me.
Again I feel her looking at me. Strange that her gaze is like a touch.
“Remember the Grand Canyon?” she asks.
The Grand Canyon. I search my mind. It’s there, buried like a seed. A good memory. Bright. Warm. Peaceful.
We’d never been to the Grand Canyon before. It took us two days to get there from LA. We arrived at midnight and slept in a seedy motel room. Crystal woke me up when it was still dark outside.
“Dress warm,” she said.
“What…”
“Come on.”
I stumbled out of bed, figuring we were getting on the road again before rush hour started. I splashed water on my face, then dressed in jeans, a sweatshirt, and a heavy jacket. Crystal was waiting in the car when I emerged. She parked in one of the Canyon lots and got out. I followed without asking questions. I’d gotten used to that.
The sky was starting to lighten as we approached one of the ridges overlooking the canyon. Vast shadows coated the rocks. A few other jacket-clad tourists milled around with cameras and binoculars. I huddled on a bench, yawning and irritable.
Then the sun peeked over the horizon and the gray pallor of the canyon began to surrender to the light. I peered at the sky for a moment and went to join Crystal, who was standing at the edge of the rocks.
We stood together and watched the brilliant light paint the canyon. We watched color dance with the silhouettes. We watched rocks warm with gold, trees and shrubs reaching out to capture the crimson. We watched the sky and clouds burst with streaks of yellow and red and blue.