"Haven't you, Mum? If I could have been kinder, more generous like Laura, more sensible, more practical like Kate. Do you think I didn't know that, didn't feel that from you every day of my life?"
Shocked and baffled, Ann shook her head. "Maybe if you'd been more satisfied with what you had and what you were, instead of running away from it, you'd have been happier."
"Maybe if you'd ever looked at me and been satisfied with what I was, I wouldn't have run so far, and so fast."
"I won't take the blame for how you've lived your life, Margo."
"No, I'll take it." Why not? she thought. There was so much on her debit side already, a little more would hardly matter. "I'll take the blame and the glory. That way I don't need your approval."
"I've never known you to ask for it." Ann strode out of the room and left Margo to stew.
She gave it three days. It was odd. They had never actually lived together in the house as adults. At eighteen Laura had gotten married, Margo had run to Hollywood, and Kate, always struggling to leap over that single year's age difference, had graduated early and bolted to Harvard.
Now they settled in. Kate used the excuse that she didn't have the energy to drive back to her apartment in Monterey, and Margo claimed to be marking time. She decided her mother had been right about some things. Laura was coping. But the difficult situation was only going to get worse. Already visitors were dropping by. Mostly the country club set, Margo noted, sniffing for gossip on the breakup of the Templeton-Ridgeway merger.
One night Margo found Kayla camped outside Laura's bedroom door because she was afraid her mama might go away too.
That was when she stopped believing it would settle down and she would go back to Milan. Her mother was right about something more, she'd decided. It was time for Margo Sullivan to hold fast and to pay back what had been given to her. She called Josh.
"It's six o'clock in the morning," he complained when she tracked him down at Templeton Stockholm. "Don't tell me you've become that monster of civilized society, Margo—the morning person."
"Listen up. I'm at Templeton House."
"That's all right then. It's the shank of the evening there. What do you mean you're at Templeton House?" he demanded when his brain cleared. "What the hell are you doing in California? You're supposed to be putting a business together in Milan."
She took a moment. It would be, she realized, the first time she'd said it aloud. The first time she would acknowledge the loss of one part of her life.
"I'm not going back to Milan. At least not anytime soon." As his voice exploded in her ear with questions, accusations, she watched one dream fade away. She hoped she could replace it with another. "Just be quiet a minute, would you?" she ordered with a snap. "I need you to do something, whatever it is that needs to be done, to have my things shipped here."
"Your things?"
"Most of it's boxed up anyway, but the rest will have to be packed. Templeton must have a service for that kind of thing."
"Sure, but—"
"I'll pay you back, Josh, but I don't know who to call and I just can't handle the extra expense just now. The plane fare cut into my resources."
Typical, Josh thought and jammed a pillow behind his back. Just typical. "Then why the hell did you buy a plane ticket to California?"
"Because Peter was diddling his secretary and Laura's divorcing him."
"You can't just go flying off whenever—What the hell did you say?"
"You heard me. She's filed for divorce. I don't think he's going to fight it, but I can't imagine the whole thing is going to be friendly, either. She's trying to handle too much of it on her own, and I've decided I'm not going to let her."
"Let me talk to her. Put her on."
"She's asleep." If Laura had been wide awake and standing by her side, she wouldn't have handed the phone over. The icy violence in Josh's voice stabbed over the line. "She had another session with the lawyer today, and it upset her. The best solution all around is for me to stay here. I'm going to ask her to help me find the right location for the shop. It'll take some of this off her mind. Laura's always better at worrying about someone else than she is at worrying about herself."
"You're going to stay in California?"
"I won't have to worry about the VAT tax or Italian law, will I?" She felt hateful tears of self-pity sting her eyes and ruthlessly blinked them back. To ensure that her voice remained brisk and steady, she set her teeth. "Speaking of law, can I give you power of attorney, or whatever it's called? I need you to sell my flat, transfer funds, all those little legal details."
Details of what she was planning ran through and boggled his mind. Had he thought typical? he mused. Nothing about Margo was ever typical. "I'll draft one up and fax it there. You can sign it, fax it back to me at Templeton Milan. Where the hell is Ridgeway?"
"Rumor is he's still at the penthouse."
"We'll soon fix that."