Identity

“I felt guilty when I even thought it.” But she didn’t now, she realized, because Gram had said it first. “Everyone felt sorry for me, but—”

“Nobody got pissed for you—or showed it. Trust me, I’m plenty pissed for you. So’s your mother, in her more delicate way. I’d like to kick that bastard’s balls blue before I twist his dick off at the root.”

With a shrug, Olivia drank more coffee. “But that’s just not-so-delicate me.”

“I can’t say exactly why,” Morgan said after a moment, “but that really helps.”

“Good.”

“I have to get a job.”

“There’s no ‘have to’ right now. Sit down, I’m making you an omelet.”

“Gram—”

“Nobody turns down one of my omelets.” Olivia rose. “Now sit. I’m going to ask you for a favor.”

“What?”

“Take two weeks. Sleep, eat, read, watch movies, take walks, build a snowman, whatever.” She got out eggs, cheese, fresh spinach. “The stress of this past year shows, baby of my baby. It shows.”

Hard to argue that, Morgan thought as she sat. She saw it every time she looked in the mirror.

“You take some time. If you need something practical to do, fine. Come into the shop and we’ll put you to work a few hours a week. Otherwise, it’s time to catch up with yourself.”

“I need to earn a living.”

“You do, of course, and you will. Two weeks out of your life won’t change that. And your mother and I want some time with you. I think—and again, when am I wrong?—you need time with us.”

Morgan said nothing as Olivia whisked eggs in a bowl while a skillet heated on the stove.

“I feel like such a failure, Gram.”

“You’ll get over that, because you’re not and never have been. You had your world fall away from under you. I know what that’s like. I had mine fall away.”

“When Pa died.”

“Then, but we had a lifetime together, and all those memories. I can pick one out, like chocolates from a box, and every one has its own flavor. But a long time ago. I lost a child.”

“What?” Morgan shot up straight. “When? I never heard—”

“Your mother was barely two, so she doesn’t remember. I never talked to her about it until after Steve died.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Steve and I built this house, this big, wonderful house, and planned to fill it with children. We wanted at least four, and when Audrey came along, we were so happy. Our beautiful girl, our first child. It was all so easy, really. And then, right on schedule, we had another coming.”

She poured eggs in the skillet, added the cheese, the spinach. “I was eight months along. We were finishing the nursery, arguing over names, all the things you do. And something went wrong. Everything went wrong. I lost the baby and any chance to have another. A little boy. He never had a chance to take his first breath.”

“Oh, Gram.”

“With the grief—I know what Nina’s mother feels because I felt it—but with the grief, I felt a failure. I lost my child and there would never be another.”

She flipped the omelet with the panache of a French chef.

“We got through it, but it was hard. It was brutal. We had our beautiful daughter. Steve had his work. I started throwing pots.” She laughed at that. “I was absolutely terrible at it, and never got better. I’m a businesswoman and no artist, but trying to be gave me a deep respect and admiration for artists, craftspeople. So it gave me a new direction.”

“The lopsided green cup he kept pencils in on the desk in his study,” Morgan remembered. “He told me once you made that in the long ago.”

“It was supposed to be a vase.” Olivia shook her head. “That man loved me. ‘Sell the stuff, Livvy,’ he said to me. ‘You know what’s good and you know how to sell. You just need a place to sell it.’”

“Crafty Arts was his idea?”

“Another chocolate from the box. So I gave up making bad pottery, and we started the shop, just a tiny place at first. But it grew, and so did Audrey. And I had a world again. A different one than I’d always planned, but a good world.”

She set the plated omelet in front of Morgan. “You’ll make new plans, build a new world. Now eat.”

“Thanks. Thanks for telling me. Gram? Could I have that cup? The lopsided green cup? It’ll remind me of him, and you, and finding new directions.”

Olivia came around the island, pressed a kiss to Morgan’s temple. Held on an extra minute.

“Of course you can. Now, you keep this in your busy mind. The man who did all this? He’ll pay, one way or the other, whether or not you ever know about it, he’ll pay. Karma’s not just a bitch, she’s a righteous bitch. And he won’t break you, because you won’t let him.

“Two weeks,” she added.

“Two weeks,” Morgan agreed. “I love you, Gram.”

“Of course you do. I love you right back. Now eat.”



* * *



So she ate, and she slept. She took walks and sat by the fire with a book. By the third day, she wondered how much longer she could keep it up without losing her mind.

Her grandmother might request two weeks, but Morgan’s wiring demanded busy. On day three, with both Olivia and Audrey at work, she sat down at the secondhand laptop, opened the spreadsheet she’d created months before.

Reality hadn’t changed since the last time she’d gone over it. Broke still equaled broke. But this time she worked on projections. No question she could live in the pretty blue room as long as she wanted or needed, rent free. But wiring also required she pull her weight.

She could take over some household tasks, but her ladies already had a weekly cleaning crew, and the trio of women who tended the rambling old Tudor had done so for a dozen years.

If she took over cleaning, she put people out of a job.

Unacceptable.

Laundry—the cleaning trio already dealt with most of that.

She could do the marketing—something—but she couldn’t subject the ladies to her cooking unless she got a lot better at it.

Marketing, doing the dishes after meals? That should keep her busy for about three hours a week, which didn’t begin to fill the hole.

She needed work. A job. Needed to earn an income.

To start on that? Drive into town, look around, visit the shop. And no, she wouldn’t work there. It steered much too close to living rent free.

She put on makeup, and since she hadn’t indulged in a professional cut and style in months, tried a few snips here and there.

She definitely wouldn’t get a job at a salon, but it wasn’t terrible.

She dressed in something other than sweats. Winter-weight leggings, boots, a red sweater over a thermal shirt. Before she could change her mind and just retreat to her room, again, she dragged on her coat, wool cap, scarf, and stepped out into the frigid, unrelenting grip of winter.

And prayed Nina’s car started.

It coughed a little, wheezed a little more, but turned over.