At the top of the long gravel driveway, she got off her bike.
The house still looked beautiful against the blue Sound and even bluer sky. The garden was an absolute mess, but only someone who’d seen it before would know that. To the first-time observer, it was simply a riot of color.
Lexi held on to the handlebars and guided the bike down the bumpy road. At the garage, she laid the bike gently on its side in the shorn grass and then she walked up to the front door and rang the bell.
It was funny how that one little action—ringing the doorbell—thrust her back in time. For a split second, she was innocent again, an eighteen-year-old girl, wearing her boyfriend’s ring, coming to her best friend’s house.
The door opened and Jude stood there. In a black T-shirt and leggings, she looked dangerously thin; her pale hands and feet seemed too big, and bony, with blue veins just beneath the skin. Lavender shadows beneath her eyes aged her, and a line of gray hair ran along her part.
“You have a lot of nerve coming here,” Jude finally said. Her voice was shaking a little, and that vibration helped Lexi gain control of her own runaway nerves.
“You’ve got some nerve, yourself. She’s my daughter.”
“Grace isn’t here. And the day care won’t let you see her again.”
“I didn’t come here to see Grace,” Lexi said. “I came here to see you.”
“Me?” Jude was growing paler by the second. “Why?”
“May I come in?”
Jude hesitated, and then backed up, whether to let Lexi in or put distance between them, she wasn’t sure; still, Lexi walked inside and closed the door behind her.
The first thing she saw was Mia’s shamrock green button-up sweater hanging from the hall tree. She drew in a sharp breath and reached for it.
“Don’t touch that,” Jude said sharply.
Lexi drew her hand back.
“What do you want?”
Lexi couldn’t stand here next to this sweater she could neither touch nor turn away from, so she walked past Jude and went into the glass-walled great room. Through the floor-to-ceiling windows, she saw the beach. Just over there, Zach had told her he loved her … and there, they’d buried their time capsule. Their proof. Their pact.
She turned her back on the view. Jude was standing by the massive fireplace now, with its roaring fire on this summer day, and still she looked cold.
Lexi remembered how beautiful and confident Jude used to be, how much Lexi had ached for a mother like her. “You remember the first time we met?” Lexi said quietly, not moving closer. “It was the first day of freshman year. I just went up to Mia and asked if I could sit with her. She told me it was social suicide, and I said—”
“Don’t…”
“You don’t want to remember. I get it. Do you think I do? I can feel her sitting here; I can hear her laughing, saying, ‘Madre, can you make us something to eat?’ and you laughing, saying, ‘I live to serve you, Mia.’ I was so jealous of the kind of family you were. The kind of mother you were. I used to dream that I could belong here, but you know that. It’s why you wanted Zach to go to USC. You wanted him away from me.” Lexi sighed. “Maybe you were right. What would I do if Grace fell in love at seventeen? Who knows? It’s so young. I see that now. Too young.” She moved toward Jude, who flinched at her approach. “You used to be the best mother in the world.”
“So?” Jude said dully.
“So … you should know how I feel about Grace. Why I need to see her. You, of all people, should understand.”
Jude drew in a sharp breath and crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Go, Lexi. Now.”
“I can’t afford a social worker to supervise my visits with Grace. But I could see her if you would supervise me.”