“You’ve never met Ellen?” Stella asked, to prompt Vienna to keep talking.
Vienna shook her head. “No. Mom and I had a terrible fight when she told me. Like I said, it was my fault. I reacted like a jealous teenager, not wanting my mommy to date. I’m embarrassed to think about how truly selfish and childish I acted. I’d been going to nursing school full-time and playing a few high-stakes games to keep the money coming in to pay the bills. I was exhausted and someone had tried to run me off the road. That was the night she chose to disclose how happy she was. I was at my lowest point. Scared. I wanted comfort and to talk things over with her. I was even considering putting off nursing school in order to pay off the medical bills faster so I wasn’t burning the candle at both ends.”
“Oh no,” Harlow whispered.
Vienna nodded. “It still doesn’t excuse my reaction. I dragged myself through the door and she was all over me, hugging and practically jumping up and down she was so excited. She didn’t notice what a mess I was or that I’d been crying. She just blurted out her news. I remember staring at her. Just standing in the entry-way of our apartment staring at her with my jacket still on. I couldn’t talk. I couldn’t get one word out. I really, really wish it had remained that way, because when I did talk, the things I said were horrible.”
Silence fell again so only the crackling of the fire remained. One of Shabina’s dogs, Sharif, padded over to the bank of windows and pressed his nose to the glass.
“That’s always my signal to close the blinds,” Shabina said. “He’s bossy that way. At least he allows me to have them open if there’s a storm. He knows I like to watch storms.” She used the remote to bring down the privacy screens, covering all the windows simultaneously.
“Doesn’t your name mean ‘eye of the storm’?” Stella asked.
“Yes, although my father says I am the storm.” Shabina sank back down and rested her back against the sofa. Sharif curled up beside her.
Vienna frowned. “Of all of us, Shabina, you’re probably the sweetest. Why in the world would your father think that?”
“Excuse me,” Zahra said, her dark brows drawing together. “I believe I’m the sweetest.”
Laughter broke out immediately, and Zahra endured it with great dignity. She poured herself the last of the margaritas from the pitcher. “All of you are not my friends right now. And I’m eating the rest of the chocolate bars, so don’t touch them.”
Stella stood up. “I’ll make a fresh pitcher of margaritas. It won’t take long.”
“There’s lots of different cookies in the kitchen,” Shabina called after her. “Throw some on another platter since Zahra isn’t sharing.”
“Only because the lot of you refuse to acknowledge I’m sweet.” Zahra sat back down and took another bar. She waited until Stella was back and had topped everyone off with a fresh drink. “How bad did it get between you and your mom, Vienna?”
Vienna frowned over the exquisite stemware. “I hurled insults at her until she finally hurled them back. But then she said something to the effect of she wasted her entire life in hiding, a sword hanging over her head for what? I wasn’t even her own blood. I know she said that. I know it. She stopped abruptly, turning white. She even put her hand over her mouth. I asked her what she meant and she said I was mistaken. That she hadn’t said that. Maybe I wished she had. Too bad for me, I was just going to have to deal. She was the one who got very ugly after that, saying really nasty things. I believe she did so on purpose in order to keep me from going back to that little piece of the fight that actually held the truth about my past.”
Stella found herself a little shocked by Vienna’s story. She sounded hurt, and Stella could understand why. Vienna had grown up close to Mitzi, her mother, just the two of them. She’d worked hard to help her mother survive and was happy to do so. It had to have felt like betrayal even if Vienna was an adult. It had always been the two of them, and suddenly bringing in a third party without any warning would have blindsided her.
They should have worked it out by now. Why hadn’t they? It made no sense that they hadn’t. Too many years had slipped by. Vienna’s mother had had cancer once already. Vienna was a nurse. She knew how quickly one could lose loved ones in accidents or to illness. She knew how often cancer returned.
“Have you tried to talk to your mother since that night about what was said, Vienna?” Stella asked, her voice as gentle as she could make it.