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She stops, the words seeming to freeze her in place.
I seize the moment. “I never said thank you. I never thanked you for moving forward. I know you wanted time to stop, but you moved on the best way you knew how. You tried to make a life for us. You made sure I knew who my dad was and that he loved me.”
I wonder now if all the times she reminded me how much my dad would have wanted to be there wasn’t some odd code for how much she wished she could be there, too, wholly and fully, without the heavy weight of grief dragging her down. When she told me my dad loved me, had that been her way of saying she loved me, too?
“I know I’m not the most demonstrative parent,” she says quietly. “That was him. He was the one who couldn’t go an hour without hugs and holding my hand. He drew me out of myself and back into the world. He made it all right for me to accept affection. Then he was gone and you didn’t seem to need it.”
“Because I was so like you. So much more like you than him,” I muse. “Heath hugs me all the time. For no reason other than he thinks I need one.”
She shakes her head. “He knows you need it, and he finds a way to give it to you. And after a while you’ll find yourself reaching for him because you’re so used to having him as comfort. I should have done that with you. I should have made it a routine so we learned the behavior because it’s something we needed.”
“It’s okay.” I’m getting misty again. This is the first real, honest talk we’ve had in years and years.
“I miss it, too, you know.”
It’s all I need. I get to my feet and I hug her. It’s a moment before her arms come around me, one hand coming up to smooth my hair. It’s awkward, like she’s trying something out for the first time in a long time. I stay there, letting the moment live, letting it connect us in a way we might have never been before.
“Ivy, I still can’t cry,” she whispers. “I feel it. I want to. But it won’t come. Why won’t it come?”
“Because you need help. Mom, let me find it for you. We can be more than this.”
That’s the moment she holds on to me, her arms tightening like she’s afraid to let me go. I hug her back.
“I’ll go see whoever you think I should, but you have to talk to Heath.”
I was going to do that anyway. “Deal.”
There’s a knock on the door, the sound separating us. My mom takes a deep breath and turns to it.
“I wonder who’s here at this hour,” she mutters as she walks toward it.
When she opens it, I worry all the work I’ve done will be for nothing because the one person in the world who can irritate my mother like no other is standing there.
CeCe. She looks past my mom at me and holds up a magazine. “Ivy, I got an early copy. It’s worse than we could have imagined.”
And my day goes to hell before the sun is fully up.
Chapter Twenty-Four
“What does it mean?” Ye Joon frowns down at the magazine.
It’s all there in glossy color. Nick is staring out, his gaze so hawklike I wonder if he practiced it. He’s got on a three-piece suit, a cigar he would never actually smoke in one hand. He looks like the douchebag Bro Coder fantasy of what a captain of industry should look like.
“It means we might be dead in the water.” Ria slumps back as she says absolutely nothing I haven’t thought. “That sucks. I like this job. It’s the most fun I’ve had in forever. I don’t want to go back to an office.”
It’s been two hours since CeCe brought the magazine over. I’ve read it three times. My mother read it and vowed to find a way to sue Nick for libel. CeCe had promised she would pay for all the lawyers in New York. I’d argued that a lawsuit wouldn’t fix my reputation and would only take up more of my time, but they’d actually left together after saying if I couldn’t help, they didn’t need me.
I shudder at the thought of them plotting. I’d thought them being at each other’s throats was bad, but now I realize a unified Mom and mentor is much worse.
“That Sherry person is all for show.” Lydia is every bit as upset as my mom or CeCe, but I can’t tell if she’s upset about the project or about what Nick said about me personally.
Because that was a lot.
Heath was reading through the copy I’d made off his printer. After Mom and CeCe had left to plot legal revenge, I’d gotten dressed and made my way over to Lydia’s because I couldn’t hide this from the team. I’d had to hit them with the brutal truth the minute they’d walked in the door. Heath had been the last, and he’d walked in carrying a big box of donuts and he’d just started to tease me when he’d realized something was wrong.
