“Sorry I didn’t call first,” Rachel said, her resolve not to cry again crumbling at Mia’s worried expression. “My life is a mess and I really need help.”
Mia’s living room was filled with the type of overstuffed furniture that swallowed you whole. Rachel chose a recliner and sank into its cushions. She explained everything, from Herman’s deal to being in love with Nathan. It felt good to finally admit it out loud.
“So, the Abbotts tricked you,” Mia said. She’d listened to Rachel’s story with the grimness of an undertaker.
“Yes,” Rachel said. “And I fell for it. I saw all that money and threw away—” The rest, she swallowed back. She’d learned her lesson about speaking her pain into existence. She couldn’t take another bruise. “Now I don’t know what to do.”
“What do you want to do?”
Rachel laughed. “What I want is not an option.”
“Why not?”
“Because it just isn’t. It never was.” She shucked off her shoes and pulled her legs up to her chest. “Where’s Livie?”
Mia turned to look over her shoulder, as if her daughter would appear out of thin air. “She’s with Ken in DC,” she said. “Her dad got her concert tickets to see that boy with the big glasses and curly hair?” She shrugged. “I never know what to do with myself when she’s gone.”
Rachel pointed to the treadmill in the corner of the room. “Work out, I guess?”
Mia nodded slowly. “Sure.” She paused. “Do you like lions?”
Rachel blinked. “I don’t know. I never thought about it.”
“Livie used to love them. It was one of her first words. She’d say la la instead of lion and it was so cute. I got mad when Ken would correct her. Anyway, for a while it was lion everything. Stuffed lions, lion birthday cake, Halloween costumes. As she got older, it was National Geographic documentaries. Her friends were into princesses, and she was obsessed with hunting conditions in the savannah.”
“I miss that,” Rachel said. “How passionate Faith would get about something. It was so intense.”
“We lose that, don’t we? Passion. Like it’s something you outgrow.” She propped her legs up on the coffee table. “So, one day, Livie is talking my ear off about how lionesses abandon the pride when they have cubs. They leave to protect them from predators, moving from place to place to hide their scent. Did you know that?”
“No, I didn’t.” She also had no idea where the conversation was going. But just listening to Mia’s low voice was calming. She sank deeper into the chair. “How long are they gone?”
“According to Livie, six or seven weeks. After that they take the cubs back to the pride. Back to all that danger they were protecting them from. It made no sense to me. I asked Livie, ‘Why would a mother uproot her life to keep her children safe, and then take them back to that same danger two months later?’ And Livie gave me that bored look I hate, you know the one, and said, ‘Because she’s not a mother. She’s a lion.’”
Mia extended her arms overhead and stretched. “It really is hard to remember who we were sometimes. Or who we are.”
Rachel used to believe that dissatisfaction was her nature. That abandoning Faith was in the blood her mother gave her, and that she’d never truly be satisfied standing still. But then she thought of Nathan, and how content she’d been with him. At the drive-in. At the lake. Maybe the real problem was where she’d been standing.
“I get it,” Rachel said. “But my situation’s not that simple.”
“Who said love was simple?” Mia leaned forward. “Love made me flunk out of law school. I ditched all my classes to help my fiancé through a mental health crisis, and he still chose work over me.” She shrugged. “Doesn’t mean I shouldn’t have loved him, or that I don’t deserve to be happy. Mistakes aren’t debts we owe to other people. They’re just part of living.”
Rachel had considered telling Faith the truth a dozen times. She’d rehearsed the conversation like a script, parsing the best way to explain that while she and Matt were over, nothing else would change. She would have a home. A life that her mother had cemented into place. So even as Faith made her way in the world, Rachel would always be her anchor.
That’s what she would have been for the rest of her life. A constant. A fixed point on a compass. But Nathan had found her. And he said she was the sun.
CHAPTER TWENTY
By the time Rachel arrived at the National Portrait Gallery, its courtyard had almost been completely transformed by the crew setting up for the gala. Slender walls with donated art had been erected throughout the space. Round tables covered with white linens were positioned to make room for dancing. A section of chairs near the front had been set up for a jazz ensemble.
Rachel was still working up the courage to open the wrapped canvases that had been delivered that morning. She’d decided it was safer to open them here, mere hours before the gala, when she’d be too busy to be tormented by Nathan’s work. She’d imagined seeing the pieces for the first time in a room bustling with harried catering staff and florists. But she’d underestimated the efficiency of the people working for Sofia—aside from Nathan’s collection, everything was done. Instead of being surrounded by strangers, she was alone with the covered paintings and Hailey Dearwood, who smiled while gripping her clipboard hard enough to turn her pale knuckles even whiter.
Matt had probably sent her to spy. She hovered close and deemed everything “interesting.” It was interesting that the media couldn’t take pictures before the gala. Rachel’s decision to keep Nathan’s work hidden until the auction closed was also an interesting choice. “I wonder if such an unusual approach is a good idea.”
“These people don’t need art,” Rachel said. “Some of them don’t even want it. But they will pay millions to screw over someone else, regardless of what the paintings look like.” She pointed to Nathan’s covered art. “The minute someone sees it and decides it’s not for them, we lose leverage. I want to max out the bidding before that happens.”
Rachel ran a finger along the edge of the canvas. Her nail snagged the paper and caused a small rip. Hailey stared and asked, “Can I see it? I can’t afford to bid anyway.”
Rachel had thought she wanted an audience when she did this. Now, in the moment, she wanted to gather up the paintings and find a dark, empty room to hide in. But the clock was ticking. And the longer she waited, the more suspicious Hailey became. Rachel ripped away the wrapping and stepped back to take it in.
It was a charcoal drawing of a young woman with brown skin and large eyes with wisps of black hair floating around her shoulders. A lace veil covered half her face. Rachel crouched to look more closely and saw that the veil was made of pressed white flowers that he’d crushed and twisted to create an intricate pattern. Abuelita was written in light script at the bottom.