Set Up in SoHo (The Matchmaker Chronicles) (32 page)

Of course, Althea had to know I was out there, too. The building was the kind that double- and triple-checks security—even though I’d been coming in and out since Althea had first moved in. I guessed she was just giving me time to compose myself. And I should have felt grateful, but all I really felt was lost.

I’d spent the past couple of hours trying to make sense of all of it, and hadn’t come up with a thing. So here I stood in the hallway, annoying Mildred DiGrassi, without a clue as to what it was I really wanted to say.

But in the end, it didn’t matter.

Althea opened the door and simply held her arms out and I was there in three seconds flat.

There’s something so comforting about a maternal hug, no matter how mad you are at the woman giving it to you. A thousand memories rushed through me. Althea braiding my hair. Althea taking me to fit my first bra. Althea beaming at my first, and only, dance recital. They’d given parts out according to talent. I was a gate. Which basically consisted of my standing in second position, and swinging a hula hoop in and out. Needless to say I was not the star of the show, but Althea had clapped as if I were a prima ballerina on opening night.

There were lots of memories there. I’d just never recognized them for what they were.

“I’m still really angry at you,” I said, pulling back.

“I know. And you have every right to be. I should have handled it better. But I was only trying to help.”

And there you had it. The purest of all motives. Even in the face of the disaster that was my life, I couldn’t help but respond to the honesty in her voice. She did love me. That much I was suddenly very certain of.

“So what have you brought me?” she asked, purposely lightening the moment.

“Bernie’s muffins,” I said, holding out the foil-covered plate. “The missing ingredient was lime zest.”

“She finally told you?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I figured it out myself. Along with a few other things.”

“I knew you’d get it eventually.” Althea smiled, her words holding a multitude of meanings. “You always do.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “But I can be a little slow.”

“Sometimes it takes a crisis for us to be able to see what’s been right in front of our faces all the time.”

“I do seem to have been enduring more than my share of late,” I said, sitting down on the sofa. The room was decorated with a light hand. Everything in shades of cream, teal, and rose. It just felt like Althea. “Although, quite frankly, some of them have been my own fault.”

“Well, at least you can admit it. Not many people can,” she said, setting the plate of muffins on the table. “And for what it’s worth, I’m really sorry for my part in all of it. I honestly didn’t set out to hurt you.”

“I know.” I nodded. “I’m not saying it helps. But I do know.” We sat for a minute in silence and then, with a sigh, I jumped right into the hard part. “Bernie told me about what happened. With Philip DuBois and my mother.”

“I know. She called to tell me.”

“To warn you, you mean,” I said, offering a weak smile. “I was pretty upset.”

“And I don’t blame you. I probably should have told you the truth a long time ago. I just wasn’t sure there was really a need. And I hated the idea of ruining your perception of your mother."

"No. It was important for me to understand what really happened. Seems I’ve been carrying around a lot of misperceptions. In fact, I think it might be my specialty.”

“You just want to see the best in everyone. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Well, I didn’t see the best in you. I blamed you for what happened with my mother. I thought you drove her away.”

Althea laughed. “As if I could have. Melina has never done anything she didn’t want to do.”

“Including abandoning me.” I hated the bitterness in my voice, but I couldn’t help it. Reality bites. “All this time I believed in a person who doesn’t exist.”

“She does exist, Andrea. On some level. Your mother lives in the moment. And when you have the chance to share that moment with her, it can be magical.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Yes,” she said. “I do. People are what they are. And we have to accept them for that. Otherwise, we’re doomed to be disappointed. But there’s no doubt in my mind that Melina loves you. She just doesn’t know how to be a mother.”

“You weren’t afraid to step up to the plate. And I wasn’t even your child.”

“You were always my child, Andrea.” She smiled, reaching over to squeeze my hands. “From the first time I saw your tiny little face. There was never a contest in my mind. It wasn’t a sacrifice.”

“But you loved Philip.”

“And he ran away with my sister. But the past is just that— the past.”

“So, do you ever talk to her? Melina, I mean?” I hadn’t consciously chosen to use her given name. It had just slipped out. But with the pronouncement, something inside me shifted. I let some of the pain go, the relief actually palpable. Like the moment after you jump off the high dive when your fear morphs into elation. I knew it probably wouldn’t last. That there were still emotions I had to deal with. But for the moment, at least, the sensation was freeing.

“Not often.” Althea shrugged. “We don’t really have all that much to say. Mother keeps me up-to-date, and that’s enough.”

“You must hate her.”

“It’s not that simple. She’s my sister. And I accepted her for who she is a long time ago.”

“And Philip? Have you talked to him?”

“Since he’s been back in New York? No. Although I probably should have. It might have made things easier for you. But you like to do things on your own, and you seemed to have things under control.”

“Now there’s a misperception.” I laughed, marveling at how comfortable I felt sharing with Althea. For a moment I considered that maybe this wasn’t my aunt. Maybe this new, softer woman was a pod person or a clone or something equally nefarious. Or maybe, for the first time, I was just seeing things for what they really were.

“Everything seemed to be progressing well the last time we talked,” Althea was saying. “Has something happened?”

“He turned me down. His publicist said it was because of you. I thought she meant all the brouhaha surrounding the bet and Vanessa and Mark’s engagement. But of course she was talking about you and Melina.”

“Well, that just isn’t going to do,” Althea said, her expression hardening. “I simply won’t let something that happened a lifetime ago impact you in a negative way.”

“I’m not sure there’s anything you can do about it. And even if you could, I’m not sure that I’d want you to. I mean, the man is slime. After what he did to you, I have no interest whatsoever in working with him.”

“What happened to me happened a long time ago,” she said, her voice soft. “It was humiliating, and painful, and something I’d have just as soon had been left buried. But the real truth of it is that Philip DuBois was the loser. Not me. I got you. He got Melina.”

It was perhaps the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me. “I appreciate the sentiment. But no matter who got the better deal, I am still not comfortable working with the man.”

“What about prime time?” she asked, cutting right to the heart of the matter.

“I’ll just have to get there some other way. If not now, then later. We’ve got a good show. And we don’t need Philip DuBois to prove it. The powers that be will just have to get a grip.”

“I love you for saying that,” Althea said, “but there’s no point in cutting off your nose for the sake of my face. Or something like that.”

“It’s a mixed-up metaphor but I get the point.” I was kind of liking this “Althea and Andi against the world” thing.

“So you’ll let me talk to him?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can get him to change his mind,” she said. “I mean, worst case, I can just threaten to air his dirty laundry.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Well, only as a last resort. This isn’t a vendetta. But I won’t allow what happened between Philip, Melina, and me to negatively impact you any more than it already has. I want your show to succeed. And if cooking with Philip DuBois is part of the package, then I’ll do whatever is necessary to make sure it happens.” Now here was the Althea I knew and loved. The queen of manipulation. Only this time she was on my side—or maybe she’d always been on my side and I’d just been too blind to see it.

Anyway, there was really no arguing with Althea once her mind was made up. “All right, then. Talk to Philip. Do your worst.”

“Or best.” She smiled. “It all depends on how you look at it.”

And that was, of course, exactly the point. It was all about point of view. And mine had been seriously askew. My mother might look at the world through rose-colored glasses, but I’d been wearing blinders. And it was past time to get rid of them. To accept my life for what it really was. I wasn’t my mother. And I wasn’t Althea. I was hopefully the best of them both. And more important, I was me. Andi. And that had to count for something.

“So,” Althea said, pulling me back to the conversation at hand. “It’s settled. I’ll call Philip. But before I do that, we still have one more thing we need to talk about.”

My newfound maturity headed south. The last thing I wanted to discuss was Ethan. Better to just close the door and move on. “Honestly, Althea, I don’t think there’s anything left to say.”

“There’s a lot to be said, Andi.” I don’t think Althea had ever actually called me Andi before. I know it’s not that big a deal, but it felt good. Right, actually. “And up until now the only person talking has been Diana Merreck.”

“Believe me, she said enough for everyone.”

“But she didn’t tell you the whole truth. And if I’ve learned anything today, it’s that it’s important to be completely honest. So I’ll admit that I helped to set you up with Ethan. But I didn’t approach him. He came to me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked, my stomach going creepy crawly on me.

“He came to me that night in the hospital. He was intrigued. But he knew you were in a bad place. What with Dillon and the breakup and everything. So he asked me for advice. And initially I agreed that it probably wasn’t the optimal time for a new man in your life. But he was quite insistent. And so I came up with the idea of arranging for him to seemingly accidentally run into you.”

“At the park. I can’t believe I didn’t see it for what it was.”

“A man so interested in a woman he’s willing to ask her family for help?”

“You make it sound so normal.”

“Well, if you put aside my profession, it is normal. And because I liked him and I love you, I agreed.”

“To set me up.”

“To facilitate the two of you coming together.”

“But Diana said—”

“Diana doesn’t know squat. There were no ulterior motives. Except maybe the fact that I wanted to make things better for you. How could I not? Dillon hurt you badly, and you have to know by now that I’d have done anything to make that better. Including shooting the boy if I thought that would have helped.”

“You never liked Dillon.”

“It doesn’t matter what I thought. You loved him. And I know what it feels like to have someone you love hurt you.”

“So you were just trying to help ease the pain?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “And I thought—still think, actually— that Ethan could make that happen.”

“And Ethan, he really just wanted to go out with me?”

“That’s pretty much it. You fell into the cellar and he fell for you.”

“So you’re saying that everything that happened, everything I said, I got it all wrong—again? I blew my chance at happiness because I believed what Diana said?”

“It doesn’t have to be over,” Althea said. “There might need to be a little groveling on your part. But he was in the wrong, too. He did lie to you.”

“Because I was so obsessed with the idea of you meddling in my life that I drove him to it.”

“It wasn’t your fault. I do meddle. It’s part of who I am. I can’t help myself. That’s why I’m a good matchmaker. And maybe not such a good aunt?”

“You’re better than good. I just wasn’t seeing things in the right light.”

“Anyway,” she said, “the point is that there’s hope for the two of you.”

“No, actually, there isn’t,” I said, staring down at my hands. “You see, Dillon helped me get out of The Pierre last night. And then he sort of stayed over.”

“I take it he didn’t sleep on the sofa.”

I shook my head. “He was really wonderful. He told Diana off, snuck me out the back way, and then apologized for everything that had happened. We talked and drank—a lot. And one thing led to another. . . Anyway, Ethan arrived to find Dillon without a shirt and me wearing a bedsheet. It wasn’t pretty.”

“Did you and Ethan talk at all?”

“Yeah. Sort of. I let him have it. And he . . . well, he didn’t have much to say. Which I guess, considering the circumstances, was understandable. Anyway, you can see now that our getting back together is out of the question. I pretty much sealed the deal, so to speak, when I slept with my ex.”

“And what about Dillon?”

“I’m not sure what you mean?”

“Are the two of you getting back together?” she asked, brows drawn together in concern.

“No. I don’t know why I ever thought we had a chance. You were right. We have nothing in common.”

“You loved each other.”

“But that’s not enough, is it? There has to be something more. Something to build on. And with Dillon, there just isn’t anything there.”

“But you still slept with him.”

“I was devastated and drunk,” I said, being completely honest with her.

“Not a good combination,” she acknowledged.

I shook my head. “I don’t really remember all that much. But I guess I just needed to know that someone cared. Anyway, I knew the moment I saw the two of them standing there this morning that what I had with Dillon was over. And as soon as Ethan left, I told him as much.”

“Sounds to me like you’ve got your head on straight. I’m just sorry it had to play out the way it did. And I honestly regret setting the whole thing in motion by not telling you about Ethan’s interest in the first place.”

“You had good reasons to handle things the way you did. It’s no one’s fault. It just is what it is. And it’s time for me to move on. It’s like you said, sometimes it’s better not to dwell on the past.”