“So what can I do? I won’t spy. Besides, Gentry doesn’t exactly listen to my advice any more than yours and Jenna’s.”
“Would you consider hiring her to work at the restaurant?” He raised his hands in surrender. “I know we’re in the process of restructuring our roles, so I’m not forcing you to do this. But I’m asking you to think about your sister.”
Colby froze. She loved Gentry but didn’t exactly relish the idea of babysitting another difficult person every day. Her marriage had proved that job to be futile and painful. “Did she ask you to talk to me?”
“No. As far as I can tell, she’s perfectly content to be aimless.” He shook his head. “I’d like you to pretend it’s your idea. Make her feel like you need her. Like you want her to work with you.”
A CertainTea was supposed to be Colby’s “happy place,” not a job where she’d be a mediator, counselor, and pseudo mother to people like Alec and Gentry. Colby rubbed her hand over her face. “She may be aimless, but she’s not stupid. She’ll see you engineering this from a mile away.”
Colby knew Alec wouldn’t want to train Gentry in the kitchen, nor could she picture her sister carrying heavy trays or waiting on customers. Colby had hired a hostess, which left office support as the sole option. Now that she’d put her personal assets at risk, she didn’t need anyone around who would make her job harder.
“Is that a no?” Her dad sighed with resignation.
He looked exhausted—maybe even a little sweaty—sitting there rubbing his knee like it ached. And he had invested in her dream. The least she could do for him was help manage his stress.
“I’ll ask. Just don’t be shocked if she’s not interested.” Colby glanced at the clock. “I’ve got to go. Is she around?”
“No, she’s shopping with Jenna.”
“They do have that in common.” Censure colored her voice.
She respected Jenna’s accomplishments, but the woman’s picture was probably listed in Merriam-Webster’s dictionary under the term “acquisitive.” In the twenty-six years since marrying Colby’s father, she’d redecorated their McMansion four times and remodeled the kitchen twice. Her shoe closet was bigger than most people’s dining rooms, and her jewelry collection rivaled Harry Winston’s Beverly Hills store. In particular, Colby thought the kitchen remodels monumentally wasteful because Jenna’s cooking skills consisted of reheating whatever leftovers remained from wherever they’d eaten the night before—if that.
“It’s what girls do.” Her dad sighed.
“Not all girls.” Colby stood, wishing that hadn’t slipped out. He’d been open with her, after all. And Jenna worked exhaustively for the money to buy her precious things. “Sorry, that was mean. I’m just feeling a lot of pressure lately, and now I’m late for Mom.”
“Well, I won’t keep you.” He rose from the stool. “Thanks for helping. I hope you can get through to Gentry.”
Colby rose up on her toes and kissed her father goodbye. “I’ll do my best.”
“You always do.” He waved her off.
Colby fastened a bit of wire-welded fencing to a corner post in the garden. She gulped down half the bottle of water she’d brought out to the yard and gazed at the horizon. The sun hovered just above the trees now, painting a golden-peach wash across the sky.
Skies like this had been one of the few things that Mark had been able to appreciate when depressed. She withdrew from the memory of him lying in bed silently gazing out the window at such sunsets, and wondered if the guilty reflex of comparing the present to her past would ever end. Unfortunately, it seemed Alec’s return had set her back a step or two from that goal.
Setting the bottle down, she assessed her progress. Two sides completed, two to go. “Mom, if we want to finish tonight, I need more help.”
“My fingers are sore from handling that wire.” Her mom gently pressed her fingertips together twice.
Colby suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. She’d split two nails tonight, but unlike her mom, she wouldn’t complain. The instant gratification and sense of accomplishment from doing handiwork were worth it.
“How about wearing the gardening gloves?” Colby unrolled more fencing from the spool by kicking it across the grass. “At least come help cut this section, please.”
“Don’t get snippy. If you would’ve let me hire someone to do the work, we could both be inside having a glass of wine like normal people.” Her mother came over with wire cutters.
“I’m pretty certain you’ll still squeeze in that glass of wine.” Colby shot her mom an amused look. “Come on, we’re almost finished.”
“Don’t rush me. I’m going as fast as I can. My arthritis hurts, you know.”
Colby’s chuckle emerged as more of a brief snort. Her mom didn’t have arthritis. She did have a habit of throwing out references to old-people problems as a way of reminding Colby that she needed help.
“When we’re done, you should stay for a while. There’s an interesting documentary I taped on this whole thing with legalizing marijuana.” Her mom tapped a finger to her cheek. “Wine is one thing, but these . . . potheads . . . I don’t know if this is a good decision for Oregon.”
“Potheads?” Colby smiled. “I think the term is ‘stoners,’ and I wonder if your poet warrior is one, like Yeats.”
“Richard is not a pothead!”
“How would you know?”
“He’s not!” Her mom drew her brows downward. “I’d know.”
“Oh? You mean like he knows about your dog?” Colby scoffed. She, too, had let infatuation trick her into thinking she knew Mark much too soon. “Have you admitted yet that you don’t have a dog?”
“Of course.” Her mom then grimaced. “Although he may be under the impression that I recently lost one.”
“Oh, Mom! That’s a terrible lie.”
“It’s a white lie.” She flipped her hands upward. “Who does it hurt?”
Colby shook her head. “Now I’m going to have to pretend, too. What’s our dearly departed dog’s name?”
“Snickers—a brown, gold, and cream-colored collie.” She smiled, proud of her inventive fib. In a twisted way, Colby almost admired her mother’s fluid relationship with reality. It would be much easier to ignore bad memories if she could continually reinvent herself and rewrite the past.
“Don’t cry to me when the truth comes out and Richard can’t believe another word you say.” She couldn’t blame her mom for wanting a relationship. Most people did. If Colby ever took that leap again—no, even that thought tightened her stomach.
“According to you, he’ll be too high to remember, anyway.” She sniffed, and then, in a classic maneuver, steered the conversation away from her flaws to someone else’s. “I’m just glad I don’t have to worry about you or your brother wasting your time and money in those pot stores. Your sister, on the other hand. She’ll probably camp out there.”