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15
Kate carriedtwo glasses of iced tea through the open doors leading from the kitchen to the terrace. A gusty breeze blew off the water, and she looked at the sky, almost surprised to see that it was only partly cloudy. Across the lawn, her mom was bent over one of the flower beds near the edge of the cliff, a straw hat blocking her face fromview.
Kate watched as her mom took handfuls of mulch and patted them around the rose bushes that lined the flower beds. Frank, the landscape manager for the property, would have done it, but her mom enjoyed puttering outside and Frank had learned to work aroundher.
Kate stepped off the terrace and onto the grass, springy under her bare feet. She’d spent the morning on a video meeting with her staff, honoring her promise to Declan to work from home. Upstairs, Griffin was taking a break from the worksheets his teacher had sent home so he wouldn’t get too farbehind.
It was a strange kind of isolation, the real world receding as she prepared to hunker down with her mom, Griff, and Beth, who’d moved back into the big house, while Declan dealt with ConnorFerguson.
Aiden had refused to leave the home he shared with Miguel even as Miguel left to visit family in Cuba for a couple of weeks. He’d also refused protection from MIS, something that hadn’t stopped Declan from putting an undercover guard on him just incase.
With any luck, Aiden wouldn’t even know the guy was there unless he neededhim.
Her mom looked up, squinting against the sun, when Kate reached her. Her red hair, threaded with silver, was ablaze in the afternoon light. “Hello,there.”
“Hey.” Kate studied the rose bushes, cut back for winter. “I thought you could use something to drink. You’ve been out here allmorning.”
“How nice.” Her mom took off her gardening gloves and reached for one of theglasses.
“I can’t believe summer’sover.”
“It goes faster every year.” Her mom sat back on her heels to look at the plants, naked without their blooms, and took a long drink of the iced tea. “It’s sure nice while it laststhough.”
Kate nodded, still holding her own glass, wishing she hadn’t bothered to bring it. “I wanted to talk to you. About…everything.”
Her mom smiled and patted the grass next to her. “Late notice for a talk about everything. Sounds like it might takeawhile.”
Kate rolled her eyes at the mom joke and lowered herself to the ground. She took a drink of the tea and her stomach turned, nervousness rearing its ugly head. She set down the glass, nestling it in the grass so it wouldn’t tip. “I just… I wanted to say I’msorry.”
Her mom wiped her free hand on her jeans. “Forwhat?”
Kate took a deep breath. “For being so hard on you about… everything. Neil and Beth and everything that happened all those years ago, the way you kept it all a secret.” She shook her head. “Turns out, it’s actually kind of hard to give everything tosomeone.”
Her mom studied her face. “Recentexperience?”
“You could say that.” Kate hesitated. “It must have been hard for you, giving up so much to stay home, be a mother to us, be a wife to someone likeDad.”
“Hard isn’t the word I would use.” Her mom wiped the sweat from her brow and took another drink of iced tea. “The choices were mine to make, and I made them. Your father could never have been with a career woman. His own career was too all-encompassing. There wouldn’t have been room for anything else. I knew that goingin.”
“Wasn’t there anything else you wanted?” Kateasked.
Her mom’s laugh was rueful. “There are always things to want. The world will deliver us an endless supply of dissatisfaction if we let it. I chose you and Aiden and Beth. I chose your dad, who I loved with all myheart.”
“Thenwhy…?”
“Did I cheat?” her momfinished.
Katenodded.
“I don’t have an excuse. Not an original one anyway. Your dad was gone a lot. He was preoccupied. I was here with you kids day after day. I got lonely. I got bored. Neil was almost like a facsimile of your dad, except Neil was always around. Even then, when he was still working at WMG, he didn’t put in the hours your daddid.”
“A cheap facsimile,” Kate saidbitterly.
“I don’t disagree, but humans have never been very good at reasoning through our needs, havewe?”
“Dadwas.”
“Well, that’s because he was terrified,” her momsaid.
