“I don’t have family at all. Since Grams died, it’s just me.” She turned and gave him a bright smile. “Shall we walk?”
“You miss her a lot.”
“She raised me. She was a mother and a grandmother rolled into one. Let’s talk about something else or I’ll start sobbing again and it was embarrassing enough the first time.”
A few moments before he’d been desperate to get back to the apartment and write, but now all he wanted was to find out more about her. It was something he’d been born with, this desire to always know more, to look deeper, but he knew that in her case there was something more personal driving him.
“What happened to your parents?”
“I never knew my dad. My mom was eighteen and about to start college when she got pregnant. I guess he thought I’d ruined his life. He wanted her to have an abortion and when she wouldn’t he went off to college, and Mom stayed at home with Grams and Gramps. She died when I was born, from some rare complication during delivery. Grams took early retirement so she could stay home with me.”
Lucas rarely thought about his own childhood. He’d been raised in the supportive cobweb of close family that included parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. His memories were of large gatherings, always noisy because his family was nothing if not opinionated, and of time spent with his brother, of scraped knees, secret hideouts and arguments. There had been nothing there to inspire the darker fiction he wrote. Nothing as lean and spare as the family life she was describing.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Her voice was level. “I never knew my mom and I couldn’t have had a happier childhood. My grandmother always said I was the one who saved them. She and Gramps had lost their only child, but they didn’t have time to fall apart because I was in neonatal intensive care with issues of my own. They virtually lived at the hospital with me and after about six weeks they brought me home. Grams said I was their most precious gift.” She stopped and gazed into a store window, as if she hadn’t just revealed something deeply personal.
It was a huge revelation, and it left him stunned. Because she was so refreshingly open, he’d assumed he knew everything there was to know about her. She was someone who shared everything, and yet she hadn’t shared this. “I had no idea you lost your mom so young.”
“It was hard on Grams.”
“And on you.”
This new information changed his view of her. It was as if he’d been standing in a shadowy room and someone had suddenly thrown open the shutters and let in the light. He understood now why her grandmother had been everything to her and why she was struggling so deeply with the loss. It explained the seam of vulnerability that he’d sensed within her, and why this time of year, with its emphasis on family and togetherness hurt so much.
“It didn’t feel hard to me. In my fairy-tale world, Planet Eva as my friends call it—” she flashed him a brief smile “—family isn’t so much about the individual people as what they represent. Family is about love, isn’t it? And security. And that doesn’t have to come from a mother. It can be a father, or an aunt, or in my case, a grandmother. What a child needs is to grow up with the knowledge that they’re loved and accepted for who they are. They need someone who will be there for them no matter what, who they can depend on absolutely so that they know that no matter how many times they screw up, or how many other people have walked away, their family is always there. My grandmother was that person for me. In every way that mattered she was my mother. She loved me unconditionally.”
And she’d lost that.
He remembered his grandmother’s words.
Maybe your listening skills need work.
He felt a tug of guilt. His grandmother had been right— he hadn’t listened properly to Eva. He’d seen the happy smile and he, who prided himself on always looking deeper, hadn’t looked deeper. He hadn’t seen how lonely she was.
He found himself wanting to say something reassuring, but what could he say? That the love she was searching for came with a price?
“Look at that. It’s like a mermaid dress.” There was a note of wonder in her voice and he followed her gaze and saw a long evening dress in graduating shades of blue and turquoise, shot with tiny strands of silver.
“You believe in mermaids?”
She lifted her hand like a stop sign. “This is not your cue to say something sarcastic or cynical. And I think the person who gets to wear that dress would definitely believe in mermaids.” She pulled out her phone, took a picture and then sent a quick email.
“You’re sending it to your fairy godmother?”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. I’m sharing it with Paige because I know she’d appreciate it.”
“If you love it, you could come back when they’re open and buy it.”
“Are you kidding? I couldn’t afford a dress like that in a million years. And even if I could, where would I wear it? I think I’d be a bit overdressed wearing it to watch Netflix while eating grilled cheese sandwiches. But that doesn’t mean I can’t dream.”
He looked at the dress again. It was a deceptively simple sheath of fabric, but the strands of silver shimmered under the lights. “You could wear it to the ball you’re making me attend.”
“I already have a dress.” She said it without enthusiasm and he searched her face for clues.
“But?”
“But nothing. It’s a great dress. I got it on sale in Bloomingdale’s a couple of years ago when I had a black-tie event to attend.” She looked away from the window. “I’ve had enough dress envy for one night. And you should go back. You have a book to finish.”