Cora and Jamie were by the island in the kitchen now, looking out at us. “I’m still getting settled in,” I told her, but she turned, ignoring this as she walked over to the pond. In her ponytails and in profile, she looked like a little kid. “Look, this is complicated, okay?”
“For me, too,” she said, peering down into the water. As I stepped up beside her I saw it was too dark to see anything, but you could hear the pump going, the distant waterfall. “I mean, a lot’s happened since you left, Ruby.”
I glanced back inside. Jamie was gone, but Cora remained, and she was looking right at me. “Like what?”
Peyton glanced over at me, then shrugged. “I just . . .” she said softly. “I wanted to talk to you. That’s all.”
“About what?”
She took in a breath, then let it out just as Roscoe popped through the dog door and began to trot toward us. “Nothing,” she said, turning back to the water. “I mean, I miss you. We used to hang out every day, and then you just disappear. It’s weird.”
“I know,” I said. “And believe me, I’d go back to the way things were in a minute if I could. But it’s just not an option. This is my life now. At least for a little while.”
She considered this as she looked at the pond, then turned slightly, taking in the house rising up behind us. “It is different,” she said.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “It is.”
In the end, Peyton stayed for less than an hour, just long enough to get a tour, catch me up on the latest Jackson gossip, and turn down two more invitations to stay for dinner from Jamie, who seemed beside himself with the fact that I actually had a real, live friend. Cora, however, had a different take, or so I found out later, when I was folding clothes and looked up to see her standing in my bedroom doorway.
“So,” she said, “tell me about Peyton.”
I focused on pairing up socks as I said, “Not much to tell.”
“Have you two been friends a long time?”
I shrugged. “A year or so. Why?”
“No reason.” She leaned against the doorjamb, watching as I moved on to jeans. “She just seemed . . . sort of scattered, I guess. Not exactly your type.”
It was tempting to point out that Cora herself wasn’t exactly in a position to claim to know me that well. But I held my tongue, still folding.
“Anyway,” she continued, “in the future, though, if you could let us know when you were having people over, I’d appreciate it.”
Like I’d had so many people showing up—all one of them!—that this was suddenly a problem. “I didn’t know she was coming,” I told her. “I forgot she even knew where I was staying.”
She nodded. “Well, just keep it in mind. For next time.”
Next time, I thought. Whatever. “Sure,” I said aloud.
I kept folding, waiting for her to say something else. To go further, insinuating more, pulling me into an argument I didn’t deserve, much less want to have. But instead, she just stepped back out of the doorway and started down the hall to her own room. A moment later, she called out for me to sleep well, and I responded in kind, these nicer last words delivered like an afterthought to find themselves, somewhere, in the space between us.
Chapter Seven
Usually I worked for Harriet from three thirty till seven, during which time she was supposed to take off to eat a late lunch and run errands. Invariably, however, she ended up sticking around for most of my shift, her purse in hand as she fretted and puttered, unable to actually leave.
“I’m sorry,” she’d say, reaching past me to adjust a necklace display I’d already straightened twice. “It’s just . . . I like things a certain way, you know?”
I knew. Harriet had built her business from the ground up, starting straight out of art school, and the process had been difficult, involving struggle, the occasional compromise of artistic integrity, and a near brush with bankruptcy. Still, she’d soldiered on, just her against the world. Which was why, I figured, it was so hard for her to adjust to the fact that now there were two of us.
Still, sometimes her neurosis was so annoying—following along behind me, checking and redoing each thing I did, taking over every task so I sometimes spent entire shifts doing nothing at all—that I wondered why she’d bothered to hire me. One day, when she had literally let me do nothing but dust for hours, I finally asked her.
“Truth?” she said. I nodded. “I’m overwhelmed. My orders are backed up, I’m constantly behind in my books, and I’m completely exhausted. If it wasn’t for caffeine, I’d be dead right now.”
“Then let me help you.”
“I’m trying.” She took a sip from her ever-present coffee cup. “But it’s hard. Like I said, I’ve always been a one-woman operation. That way, I’m responsible for everything, good and bad. And I’m afraid if I relinquish any control . . .”
I waited for her to finish. When she didn’t, I said, “You’ll lose everything.”
Her eyes widened. “Yes!” she said. “How did you know?”
Like I was going to go there. “Lucky guess,” I said instead.
“This business is the only thing I’ve ever had that was all mine,” she said. “I’m scared to death something will happen to it.”
“Yeah,” I said as she took another gulp of coffee, “but accepting help doesn’t have to mean giving up control.”