He’d come to her tonight. She’d cried, so he’d be there. Is that how she wanted to keep a man? With tears and neediness?
In her mother’s driveway, she shut off the engine and rubbed away a cramp in her calf. This couldn’t go on. She couldn’t keep depending on him. He’d get tired of her antics and leave even sooner than he’d already planned.
She shook herself and shoved open the car door. What did it matter? Men always left anyway. They always got tired. She’d survived it before; she would again. It hurt for a little while, then it was over, no big deal.
But the thought of not hearing his voice anymore left an ache around her heart.
“I’m in the kitchen,” her mother called cheerily before Bree even closed the front door.
“She’s manic,” Bree muttered under her breath. Her mother was too happy. She’d always been stoic, not happy. The change was unsettling. What if this was the beginnings of dementia? How would Bree take care of her?
She followed the scent of cookies. Her mother had been baking again. When she wasn’t throwing out stuff, she was baking, baking, baking. Who was going to eat all of it? Oh yeah, Luke would eat it.
“Look what we’ve got.” In the kitchen, her mom’s eyes were maniacally bright as she pointed at the freshly baked tray of chocolate chip cookies. A small cardboard box sat nearby on the counter.
Ignoring the cookies, Bree pointed to the box. “What’s that?”
“Your father’s ashes.”
Bree swallowed, but her throat hurt, and her breath suddenly seemed to come too fast for her nostrils to handle. That’s all they came in, just a plain cardboard box? Probably because her mother wasn’t willing to pay for an urn. She opened her mouth, but that was even worse, as if there was ash in the air, getting sucked down with every breath. Her mom had been baking with her dad’s ashes on the counter. Oh God.
“I hadn’t imagined they’d do it so quickly, but they called, and I just rushed right down,” her mother said without the slightest hint of emotion. Even Bree had emotions; she just wasn’t sure what they were.
This was totally freaky.
“I thought of the perfect place for him,” her mom said as if she were talking about just the right spot to plant amaryllis bulbs. It was then that Bree saw the Dumbo cookie jar next to the box. Her mother pulled on Dumbo’s curled tail, the jar’s handle, and removed his rear end. “We’ll put him in here.”
In Dumbo’s
ass
? Oh. My. God.
“It never really worked as a cookie jar anyway, because you couldn’t reach the front cookies and all the crumbs went down into his legs.” Just like Bree’s father always said. Her mother sounded like a parrot. “But this is perfect, don’t you think?”
“Uhh.” That was all the sound Bree could manage.
“Here, you put him in.” Her mom shoved the box at her.
Bree almost screamed and jerked her hand away before it touched her. “This is crazy. You can’t put him in a cookie jar. Take him out and scatter him over the ocean.”
For the first time in the past three days, her mother glared at her. “This is where he deserves to be, Brianna. In a place he hated.” She grabbed the box, opened it, and pulled out a plastic bag secured with a nylon cable tie, a metal tag attached to it.
Dear God. Her father was in a baggie with dog tags identifying him.
Her mother cut the cable tie with a pair of kitchen scissors “It’s perfectly fitting,” she said, then turned the bag upside down and fed the opening into the cookie jar.
Bree expected to hear chinks and clunks against Dumbo’s ceramic sides, bone fragments, but there was just a
pfft
of air. Did everything get completely incinerated, pulverized, what? She suddenly felt lightheaded, dizzy, even sick as her mother emptied the bag with a final puff of gray.
Bree couldn’t stand it anymore, and she backed away, stumbling over God knew what, maybe her own heels. “This is completely dysfunctional. Are you just going to leave him on the counter?” Bree wanted him gone, his memory expunged, so they could be normal. Or at least pretend they were. God forbid she’d have to come over for Sunday dinner with his freaking ashes on the counter.
“I haven’t decided,” her mother said. “I might put him in the bathroom on the back of the toilet.”
“We should talk about this, Mom.” It was dementia. Or maybe a nervous breakdown from all the stress of the last few months. “You’ve got unresolved feelings.” They both did, but neither of them would do more than dance around the subject.
Did you know, Mom?
Her mother simply stared at her. “It’s just ashes. It’s not even him. Let me have my petty fun.”
“You sound like you hated him.” Just as she had the night they stood by his bed waiting for him to die.
Say something now, Mom.
Her mother snorted. “Of course I didn’t hate him. He’s your father.”
That didn’t mean anything at all. As far as conception went, he was just a sperm donor. “We should really talk about this.” Bree wasn’t sure she even wanted to, but her mother was acting too outlandish to ignore.
“There’s nothing to talk about.” She crumpled the empty bag, tossed it, the cable tie, and the metal tag back into the box and opened the door beneath the sink to throw the whole lot in the trash. Like garbage. Then she pushed Dumbo back into his place on the counter among the other cookie jars.
Bree would never eat another cookie from one of her mother’s jars.
Then, as if nothing totally insane had happened, her mom asked, “Is Luke coming over for dinner?”
Bree felt as if she were spinning off into space. She couldn’t think, couldn’t deal, and the most she could manage was to go right along with her mother. “He didn’t say anything about dinner specifically, just that he’d see me later.”
“Well, I’ll make something special.” Then her mom smiled and pointed her finger at Bree. “He adores you, and he’ll be here, don’t you worry. You need to hang on to that man, Bree. He’s older and wiser and he’ll take good care of you.”
God, she sounded like that silly song from
The Sound of Music
. They were both completely nuts. “Mom, would you quit with that?”
But her mom didn’t quit. “Now go take a shower. You look awful, your makeup’s a mess, and your hair is a bunch of tangles.”
Gee, thanks a lot, Mom.
She didn’t say it, didn’t want to fight about it. Her mother had always wanted her to put on more makeup, do something more with her hair, and wear more dresses instead of slacks. “Look, Mom, we need to talk about stuff like arranging to see the lawyer.”
Her mother flapped a hand. “I’m going to see him on Thursday at nine.”
Dammit. Bree was supposed to meet with Marbury at nine on Thursday. “Why didn’t you tell me you were making an appointment? I’ve already got something Thursday that I can’t miss.”
“Oh, I don’t need you, dear. It’s just a formality. Your father set up that trust and everything will go as smooth as cream.”
“But, Mom—”
Her mother pursed her lips. “You worry too much. I’m not an idiot. I can do things on my own.”
“Then what do you need me here for?” She didn’t mean to sound so harsh, but her mother simply exasperated her.
Her mom grabbed her arm, her fingers pinching into Bree’s flesh even through her jacket. “You can’t leave me. I need you here, Brianna. I can’t face this house on my own yet.” Her eyes were suddenly wide, stark.
“You’re alone in it all day.”
“But I know you’re coming back and that makes it easier.”
Bree stared at her mom. Maybe she should get rid of the damn ashes instead of putting them in a cookie jar. That would sure as hell banish the ghosts more quickly.
She knew she wasn’t a good daughter, but the least she could do was stay a few more days. A normal person would. It was expected. Sometimes, you just had to suck it up and pretend you were actually normal.
“Okay, Mom. I’ll stay.” Maybe she could figure out if her mom had developed dementia.
“SO YOU ALREADY HAVE TWO DAUGHTERS. DOES THAT MEAN YOU don’t want to have any more children when you remarry?”
Bree almost spat out the homemade minestrone her mom had prepared for dinner. “Mom. Leave him alone.”
“I’m just making conversation, Bree.”
“That’s fine,” Luke said, all good-guest and smiles. “I have no plans either way right now, Mrs. Mason.”
He was so damn sexy in his dark suit and white shirt, Bree itched to touch him. She had never itched to touch a man before, not like this, where she just wanted to rub up against him like a kitten. It was this weird new phenomenon with Luke. Since her father had died? She couldn’t pinpoint it exactly.
But geez, her mom was wearing her out with all the push-push-push, and she was terrified Luke would ask for a cookie out of Dumbo. “It’s time to go anyway,” Bree said. “We’ll be late.”
“I didn’t know you had definite plans.” Her mother let her mouth droop. “You didn’t mention that before.”
Bree smiled, her face brittle. “Very definite. We should get going.”
“But I made dessert,” her mother said plaintively.
“You can wrap it up, and Luke can take it home with him.”
“It’s bread pudding. It has to be hot.”
In the meantime, Luke was sitting back, his soup bowl empty, the warm French bread gone. Watching. What did he see? What was he thinking? That she was rude to her mom?
Bree took a breath and wished he’d jump to her rescue with a word of agreement. Why did he have to keep coming over anyway?
“I would love to take a piece home, Mrs. Mason. And I promise to heat it up in the oven, not the microwave.”
Oh thank
God
he’d said
something
.
Her mother beamed. “Yes, the oven is much better. I’ll dish it out while Bree finishes getting ready.”
“She looks lovely the way she is.”
God, he was a schmoozer, too. She’d primped for him tonight with makeup and fresh hair, and a skirt, the way he’d ordered her. Stockings, no panties. Just for him.
He excused himself to use the restroom, and Bree helped her mother carry the dishes to the sink.
“Bree, your shoes are too tall again.” Her mother practically hissed the comment in her ear. “You need to change them. A girl should never be taller than her beau.”
God. “He’s not my
beau
. And Luke loves my high heels.” Her fuck-me shoes, he called them. “Leave it alone.” Then she turned and put her hands together in a prayer. “Please, please, please stop with all the pushy questions. You’re embarrassing me.”
“I just want to know his prospects.”
“Mom, he’s forty-five years old, a CEO, divorced with two daughters. He’s stable, and his prospects aren’t your concern.”
Her mother pouted as she filled a plastic tub with bread pudding.
Yet when Luke returned, she beamed, handing over the container and telling him what temperature to set the oven at.
“Thank you. And I’ll have her home early,” Luke promised.
“Oh, don’t you worry about me being alone. I’m fine. You two have fun.”
Right, that’s why her mom had begged Bree not to leave her. Bree rolled her eyes. She hadn’t even talked about going out with Luke, but she couldn’t stay in there with her mother pestering him.
“How are you feeling?” Luke asked after he’d climbed in the car. Polite as always, he’d opened her door first.
“I’m fine.”
“Everything okay with your mom?”
“You heard her. She’s fine.” Putting good old Dad’s ashes in Dumbo’s ass and planning her daughter’s freaking wedding, too.
“You seem a little tense.”
“I’m not tense,” she snapped. God, this wasn’t where she wanted to go. She never got all emotional and bitchy with Luke, but she’d done it two evenings in a row now. That wasn’t what their relationship was about, but she couldn’t seem to help herself when she was around her mother.
“After this morning, you might need to vent some of your feelings,” he said as he drove away from the house.
She didn’t want to vent. She didn’t want to admit she had feelings. They were difficult to quantify and analyze. And she couldn’t tell him about Dumbo. “I have nothing to vent.”
He sighed audibly as the car came to rest at a stoplight. “All right. Your mom seems to be handling everything great. She’s a strong woman.”
Why that pissed her off, Bree couldn’t say, but she snorted. “Yeah, right, you should have seen what she was doing this afternoon.”
“What was she doing?”
Shit. Why had she said that, for God’s sake? He’d pick at it like a bone. “Forget it. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
But Luke never let
anything
drop.
25
THAT’S JUST WHAT LUKE DID. PICK, PICK, PICK.
He pulled out of the light he’d stopped for and said, “
You
mentioned your mother. Maybe I can help.”
“I don’t think so,” Bree whispered, the words rough in her throat. He’d think they were both nuts if she told him about her father’s ashes.
“Tell me. You know you want to or you wouldn’t have brought it up.”
He said it like he thought he knew women, how their minds worked, and maybe he did after living with two daughters and a wife. But he didn’t know
her
. “Look, I didn’t
mean
to say it, and it’s not your business.” The last part came out more sharply than she intended. She was being a bitch when he was only trying to help, yet there was also a part of her that marveled she could speak to him this way. A man. Her master. She was terrified to say no to Marbury, but here she was telling Luke to butt out.
“So. You feel that how you and your mom are doing after a death in the family isn’t my business.” In the oncoming lights, his jaw tensed and his nostrils flared. “Then why don’t you tell me what
is
my business.”
“The sex, Luke. That’s what we are, sex. You’ve always liked that. The stuff we did this morning in your office.” Though she’d never come to his office before. Yes, yes, she
knew
she’d crossed a line there. But they’d fantasized about a quickie. It
had
been discussed.