Where Your Heart Is (Lilac Bay Book 1) (22 page)

“It’s better this way, Iris,” he said, turning to go. “We obviously want different things.”

“I don’t know what I want,” I cried, reaching for his shoulder. “That’s the point.”

He turned once more to face me, all the anger gone, leaving him to look flat and tired. “Well, I know exactly what I want, Iris.” His eyes sweep my face. “Or at least I thought I did. Good luck at the interview.”

And then he was gone, striding down the walk into the darkness, leaving me alone on the steps.

I
t was
strange how quickly I fell back into my old role. The polished, confident, well-spoken woman in the expensive suit and perfect shoes. I could tell, before it was even over, that I nailed that interview. I could see it in their body language, the H.R guy and the vice president of the firm, the way they leaned toward me when I talked, the way they laughed and smiled at the exact moments I wanted them to. I even managed to put a good spin on the disaster that got me fired. They loved me.

My mom waited down in the lobby. She took one look at my face and grinned. “Success?”

“I think so.”

She took my arm, giving it a squeeze, and I couldn’t help but smile. It felt good, proving that I still had what it took to nail an interview like that. Granted, I felt the strangest combination of dull numbness and something close to panic when I thought about actually taking the job, but it was nice to do well in the interview, regardless. As far as the decision… I would just have to cross that bridge when I came to it.

“We should celebrate,” Mom said as we walked out into the oppressive summer heat. I had forgotten how miserable Chicago could get in the summer, so humid and sticky. Summer came slower to the island, with the lake breezes and the northern location. In Chicago, my blouse was sticking to my shoulder blades before we’d walked more than a few steps. And it was only mid-June. I tried to imagine living here in another month and shuddered a little.

“Iris?” she pressed. “Did you hear me? I said we should celebrate.”

“Right.” I shook my head, trying to clear it from thoughts of a cool breeze off the bay. “Well, they haven’t actually offered it to me yet, Mom.”

She waved her hands dismissively. “You had a good interview. That’s reason enough to celebrate. Besides! We’re back in our old stomping grounds. We used to have a lot of fun in this city.”

I felt the usual flash of anger at her words. My go-to reaction to any mention by her of the old days was to get immediately pissed. It was
her
fault that things had changed. But somehow, that anger felt muted today. Dull. Maybe it was the heat, making me fuzzy.

“Sure,” I said, making my voice light with just a little effort. “What’d you have in mind?”

She thought for a moment. “Brunch at Carter’s, obviously. And a mani-pedi? There’s that salon on Oak. And then maybe we could shop a little.” She laughed, slipping her arm through mine. “I haven’t set foot on the Mag Mile in years. Let’s go give my credit card a work out.”

So we did. We had brunch, got our mani-pedis, and went shopping. We even popped into the Art Institute to see
Nighthawks
, her favorite painting by Edward Hopper. It was kind of bizarre, having a girl’s day with my mom in Chicago. We used to do this kind of thing all the time, before she left. For as busy as she always was, she somehow managed to make plenty of time for me. For years after she left, I couldn’t bring myself to eat at Carter’s, our favorite restaurant. It was those days, more than anything else that I missed when she was gone.

So it felt strange to be doing those things again after so long. Strange but also kind of… nice. We chatted easily, for the most part. About previous outings in the city. People we had known when we lived here. Properties that I’d had a hand in developing. Every once in a while, the topic of conversation would shift to the island. She was highly amused by the Libbies and laughed her head off when I described the antics I had witnessed over the last several weeks. We didn’t talk about family—Posey hadn’t spoken to me since Friday night, and I had been too afraid to face Mimi beyond stilted, overly polite greetings when we passed in the kitchen. We avoided talking about David, too. He’d texted me that morning to wish me good luck, but otherwise we hadn’t spoken.

But even with the conscious effort to avoid touchy subjects, every once in a while, she would say something that would have me tensing up. A mention of one of her paintings. Something she’d done on Lilac Bay after I’d left. Random little things that reminded me that there was a reason we hadn’t done this in so long, and that reason was that she chose to leave.

We were walking out of Saks when my phone rang. “It’s Dad,” I told her, my stomach dropping a little. She squeezed my arm and led me over to a bench as I pressed accept on my touch screen. “Hey, Dad.”

“Iris.” His voice was smooth and professional as ever, but I couldn’t help but think there was a touch of something else underneath the polished veneer. Excitement, maybe?

“You really impressed the vice president. I just got off the phone with Kent himself. They’re going to offer you the job.”

All the air left my lungs in a rush. I had been right. I nailed it.

“You should be hearing from them in the morning,” he went on.

My mind felt strangely blank, and I was having a hard time grasping any of the words he was saying. “Why’d they tell
you
?” I blurted out, surprising myself. Where had that come from?

My dad went silent on the other end of the phone. Finally, he cleared his throat, and there was no more excitement to be heard anywhere in his tone. “I had to pull a lot of strings to even get you this chance, Iris,” he said. “Kent was basically doing me a huge favor.”

“Well, that’s a nice shot for my confidence.”

“I have no idea what’s come over you these last few weeks,” he said. “You should be thanking me, Iris. And thinking about ways that you can use this opportunity to your full advantage.”

“What do you mean? I thought they wanted me to have the job.”

“Do you honestly expect it to be that easy? Iris, you have seriously damaged your own reputation with your antics this spring. You’re going to have to work doubly hard to get your edge back. Put in the work, put in the hours.” I had a sudden image of myself on my last birthday. Phillip had planned a dinner out with some of our mutual friends, and I’d had to cancel, too involved in whatever deal it was at the moment to get away. God. No wonder he broke up with me. I tried to envision going back to that kind of life. Worse, even, if my dad was to be believed. It sounded like I was going to have to basically start over.

A bead of sweat dripped slowly down my spine. I had a feeling it had nothing to do with the heat.

“I’m having the maid prepare your room right now,” my dad was saying, and I struggled to pick up the thread of conversation.

“My room?”

“Here at the apartment.”

“Your apartment?”

“Aren’t you listening?” He sounded angry now. “You need to hit the ground running! I’m having a room prepared for you so you can stay in the city and get right to work. I’m having drinks at the Drake tomorrow night. It would be good for you to start doing some networking, get back into it.”

“I have to go back to Lilac Bay,” I said, my mind still doing that weird blank thing. Nothing was making any sense. “All of my things—”

“You can ask your mother to send the rest of your things,” he said dismissively.

“But, Mimi and—”

“There are telephones for goodbyes, Iris. Now, I can send a car for you if you like or—”

“No,” I whispered. My hands were shaking so hard, I almost dropped the phone. “I’m not coming to stay with you tonight.”

“Iris—”

“I haven’t even accepted the job yet.”

The line went quiet, and I felt a little spark of fear. Somehow, I knew exactly how mad he was. “What are you saying?”

“I’m not saying anything, Dad. I just… I’ll need to think about it, right? Talk it over and—”

“There is nothing to talk over! This is a fantastic opportunity, and you won’t find anything better!”

Was he right? Was there anything better out there for me? Was working fifteen-hour days the best I could hope for? Constantly networking but never really having fun, never making friends. Too busy even to go back to say goodbye to my family. To David.

A cold fear filled me, shocking away the rest of the numb fuzziness in my brain. “No,” I said, my voice stronger now.

“You’re turning this down?” he spluttered.

“I didn’t say that. But I’m going to wait until I actually hear from them myself. And then I’m going to make a decision.” I looked over at my mother. She had been sitting silently throughout the entire conversation, watching me. “Based on an examination of all the evidence.” She smiled, and I felt a strange sense of triumph.

“What does that mean?”

“I have to go, Dad. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Iris!” But for once, I was the one hanging up first, without saying goodbye.

I sat there on the bench, breathing heavily, feeling like I’d just completed a race of some kind.

“Well,” my mother said after a moment. “It sounds like we could use a martini.”

I laughed, ready to agree. And then the strangest thought occurred to me—I wanted to see the water.

“Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of ice cream. Maybe on the beach?”

She stood without hesitation, holding out her hand for me. “I never say no to ice cream.”

* * *

L
ake Michigan looked
different from this shoreline. The waves were larger, the color a lighter blue than the nearly navy shade I had gotten used to up north. Thinking about how much water stretched between us and the island still gave me a little shiver, but looking out at the water no longer filled me with the same panic it once had. I knew it couldn’t hurt me as long as I was careful and respectful, the way David had taught me.

“So,” my mother said after fifteen straight minutes of silence. We’d both finished our ice cream and were sitting in the sand, shoes off. I was probably going to ruin my nice suit, but I couldn’t muster the energy to care. My mom looked much more appropriate for beach-sitting in her faded jeans and blue tank top, her sun-bleached waves flowing around her face in the wind.

“So,” I replied, and she bumped her shoulder with mine.

“I’m sensing you’re not super excited about this job offer.”

I blew out a deep breath. “Your senses are correct.”

“Then say no.” She said it like it would be the simplest thing in the world.

“And do what instead? It’s a really good job, Mom. A top firm. I would get to travel and work on big projects, much bigger than what I was doing before. I’d be able to make a name for myself.”

“Are you trying to convince me or yourself?”

I sighed, digging my toes deeper into the sand. “I don’t know.”

She mimicked my pose, and I noted that my fifty-five-year-old mother was sporting bright blue toenails, while mine were a more sedate shade of baby pink. Sedate—more like boring. I sighed.

“Iris, just because it’s a good job doesn’t mean you’re obligated to take it. Just because you think it would have made you happy at one point doesn’t mean it will make you happy now.”

“You know, it wasn’t a rhetorical question when I asked what I would do instead. I have no idea, Mom. I’ve been working toward this my whole life. I have no idea what I would do if it wasn’t this.”

“I didn’t know, either,” she murmured, and I felt my spine stiffen. It was her turn to sigh. “I know you don’t approve of my choices, Iris. That’s okay. I had to make decisions for myself, not based on what someone else thought I should do.”

“I thought mothers were supposed to make choices for their family,” I said before I could stop myself, my voice sharp.

She drew in a ragged breath. “I thought I was.”

I turned to her in disbelief. “You thought leaving was the best choice for your family? Come on, Mom. That doesn’t even make sense.”

“I thought leaving was the best choice for
you
,” she argued.

I laughed bitterly, moving to stand. I wasn’t going to sit around and listen to her rewrite history. But she grabbed my arm, her expression fierce.
She looks like my mom
, I realized with a jolt of surprise. Like the mom who yelled at me for breaking off the heel of her Manolos and trying to hide it. Like the mom who insisted I finished my homework before talking on the phone for hours. She looked… parental.

“I thought getting you out of the environment that your father and I created would be good for you, yes,” she said.

“What environment? Our home?”

“The environment that put so much pressure on my shoulders that I thought I would collapse under it.” She sighed, running her hands through that long hair. “Iris, I was unhappy for a long time. The work, the schedule, the stress of it. It was ruining me. It was ruining my marriage. And I saw the way you looked at your father and me, the way you seemed to idolize everything that we were and it… scared me. I didn’t want you growing up like that. Feeling like the only measure of your success in life was how much money you could make.”

“And you thought leaving was the answer?” I felt like crying. I wanted to be angry at her words, to tell her that she was wrong, that there was nothing wrong with the way she and my father had worked all those years. But I just couldn’t. Something about her voice—maybe it was desperation—felt too familiar to me. “Why couldn’t you have just quit? Gotten a different job? Why couldn’t you have been an artist in Chicago, Mom?”