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“She didn’t give me all the details,” Jean said. “But that’s why she’s at Cliffside today. She’s taken a job there, with Eloise, Julie, and Rhonda.”
“Eloise has needed the help for a while,” Kristen added quietly. She’d once had two more managers, but they’d both quit at the beginning of the summer, so Kristen was glad El had found the help she needed.
She didn’t want to discount Robin’s turmoil, because she knew the relationship between her and her mother had been strained for four decades.
“So she didn’t take the offer,” Robin said. She had eaten very little, though her plate held plenty of food.
“I don’t know what the offer was,” Kristen said. “Or if there was one. If there was, I don’t think Clara took it.”
“She never told you about it?” Robin zeroed in on Kristen, who shook her head, and then Jean, who did likewise.
Robin visibly relaxed, and she poked her fork into a bowtie and lifted it to her lips. “Alice said she saw them at The Glass Dolphin, that my mother pretended not to know Clara and Scott.”
Kristen reached across the space between them and covered Robin’s hand. “This bothers you, because you don’t like things to be unjust.”
Robin shook her head, her tears shining in her eyes again.
“And you wish your mother would invest in you.”
Robin let a single tear slip down her face, and she quickly wiped it away. “I’m fine.”
Which meant she wasn’t.
“Of course you are,” Jean said. “But it’s okay to want your mother to confide in you.”
“Or give you a rent break when you need it,” Kristen said.
“Or loan us the money for Duke’s boat,” Robin said. “I just…” Her shoulders slumped. “You don’t think Clara took it?”
“If she did, it wouldn’t make sense,” Kristen said. “She’s really not going to continue with the inn.”
“When did she tell you that?” Robin asked.
Kristen’s memory wasn’t as good as it once had been. Then it fired, and she said, “The same day as Asher’s birthday party.”
“That was almost a month ago,” Robin said. She looked between Jean and Kristen. “Why hasn’t she told any of us?”
Kristen didn’t have an answer for that. She knew her daughter well enough, and opening up for her might actually cause her to break out in hives.
“She’s…working on that,” Jean said.
“You two knew.” Robin wasn’t asking.
“I only found out because she asked me to help with Lena in the mornings,” Jean said.
“I stay with Aunt Jean in the mornings,” Lena said.
Kristen smiled and pulled her hand back. “That’s right, dear. You get to go help Aunt Jean with breakfast in the mornings.” She threw a smile in Robin’s direction too. The woman had calmed, and she took a bite of her sandwich now.
Things weren’t all the way fixed, or even close to right, but she wasn’t wound all the way to one hundred anymore, and Kristen hoped this wasn’t the calm before the storm.
A couple of evenings later,she smiled over to Theo as he laced his fingers between hers. “What are you smiling about?” she asked.
“I have a surprise for you,” he said. He’d come to pick her up at her condo, saying he wanted to take her to dinner. She was extraordinarily bad at cooking for one, and she’d never say no to someone who wanted to take her to dinner.
Deep down, she knew it was more than that. She wouldn’t just go out with any man. She sure did like Theo, and as their relationship had started into its fourth month, Kristen had started thinking about the end game of it.
What was she going to do? Date him until one of them passed away? Could she get married again? Was he thinking along those same lines?
