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Until next time, my beautiful daughter.”
She exits the shop, and I’m both glad and sorry to end this time with her. I send Jason a text asking if he’s still around to come pick me up or if I should find a bus route, and I fiddle with my scarf.
Something nudges the back of my mind, something I need to ask Florence before conceding that this is probably the last time I’ll ever see her in person.
“Wait, Mom,” I call, running out of the coffee shop and down the sidewalk. She pauses and turns back to me, so I continue, “The note you left. What did you mean?”
Her brows pull together. “The first one?”
“Yes. ‘I’m so proud of you, sweetheart. Everything will be okay now,’” I quote, knowing it by heart. “What did you mean by that?”
The confusion lifts from her face as she smiles proudly at me, placing her hand on my cheek in a tender, motherly gesture. “I meant that I was proud of you because you were getting our name out there again. Because of you, I started getting more publicity, and you can see I’ve been leveraging it as much as I can.”
I swallow the hurt, looking down at the ground. So, she wasn’t proud of me for standing up for Gia or staying strong through everything. How could she be? She admitted she doesn’t know many of the details, just enough to warrant wanting an exclusive tell-all documentary.
“And ‘everything will be okay now’?” I ask, almost not wanting to know the answer.
“With the deal, of course. I was giving you a heads-up without saying it in case I got your hopes up too much.”
She steps closer to look directly into my eyes, lowering her voice. “We’re going places, baby, and everything is going to be more than okay now. It’s going to beperfect.” She backs away, dropping her hand. Instinctively, I know I’ll never feel it gently placed against my cheek again. “I’ll be in touch.”
No, she won’t. Not after I’ve definitively told her I’m not doing her documentary and effectively ruined her shot at a comeback.
She walks past the other shops to the curb with a Hollywood stride I don’t remember her having before, one that says she’s an important person with important places to go, not looking back once. I stare after her, my heart heavy for multiple reasons that are competing to be processed.
“Siena?” a voice from behind me asks, and I freeze.
Gia and Brianna appear beside me, but neither is looking at me; they’re both staring at the back of Florence’s retreating head. “Is that . . .” Gia takes off running.“Mom!”
Fuck.
Seven
Gia sprints after Florence, and I stand there stunned with Brianna.
“Was that Florence Bowen? Like fromAlien Squidfrom Jupiter?” Brianna asks, but I don’t look away from Gia. “She looks more glamorous in person. My mom said she went to school with her and that she got suspended twice for stealing test answers. She also said Florence stole her boyfriend.”
I don’t pay any attention to Brianna. Florence gets in a blacked-out SUV, and it takes off the second the door closes behind her; she never even noticed Gia chasing after her.
Gia runs back to us, panting to catch her breath as she asks, “Was that really Mom? Did you talk to her?”
“Why didn’t you tell me your mom was Florence Bowen?” Brianna asks Gia, then she gasps and says, “That’swhat Brandon meant when he said your mom was a Hollywood whore! He knew and didn’t tell me! Um . . . I mean . . . not that I agree with his opinion or anything . . .”
No one replies to Brianna, since Gia and I are engaged in a stare-off. She looks curious, excited, and hurt. I, meanwhile, am just repeatedly thinkingoh shitoh shit oh shit.
“Siena?” Gia prompts.
There’s no proper way to handle this. I’m going to hurt Gia no matter what I say, and since there’s no point lying to her, I reluctantly admit, “Yeah, that was Mom.”
Her eyes light up, and she looks back at where Florence disappeared. “What is she doing here? She came to see us? Is she meeting us at the house? Let’s go!”
She grabs my hand and tries to pull me through the parking lot, and I dig my feet in to stop her. “No, Gia, she’s on her way to the airport right now.”
“Oh.” Gia’s shoulders slump, and her disappointment is a kick in the gut. “What was she doing here? What were you doing here? Did you just run into her, or . . . ?”
Either my guilty face gives me away or Gia comes to the realization all on her own, because she drops my hand like I burned her and steps away from me. “You said you had a date with Jason. You lied.”
There’s nothing I can say to make this better. Gia has been telling me how much she misses Mom and I dismissed it, telling her it’s better for us to forget about Mom because she’s never coming back. But here she is, back, and I had a secret meeting with her.
