least one night. I’m investigating hotels and inns. I haven’t made reservations yet. I’d do a bed-and-breakfast, but I don’t think your father would like it.”
Olivia smiled. “You could try. It’d only be a couple nights, right?”
Her mother nodded, staring at the pictures on her desk. “They say driving south-to-north isn’t as unnerving with the cliffs and water as north-to-south, but people do both. Driving south you hug the coast. You see more, I guess. I think we’ll see plenty.”
“Are you going as far as San Francisco?”
“I think so. It depends on how much time we have.” She shifted from the photographs to a map of California she had tacked to the wall, with pushpins marking various stops she wanted to make. She seemed transfixed, then took a slow, deep breath and turned to Olivia, obviously forcing a smile. “It’ll be fun. I can’t wait.”
“When do you leave?”
“We haven’t set a date yet. Depends on the work here. Your father is overdue for a vacation.”
“You are, too,” Olivia said.
“I suppose. I started dreaming about this trip a few years ago when we did the custom windows for that house in Carmel. Remember, Liv? It was outside our usual area, but the family used to live in Boston and knew about us. They sent pictures…” She sighed, standing back from the desk. “It’s beautiful here. I don’t want to live anywhere else, but I knew I had to go to California, see this part of our country.”
“Good for you, Mom.”
“Yeah.” She seemed a little shaken, as if she’d said too much. “Thanks.”
Olivia heard the main door open. In another moment, Jess appeared in the office doorway, tightening the belt to her tan raincoat. “I’m on my way to Boston and thought I’d stop in. I’m meeting with clients. Want to come, Mom?”
“I should mind things here.”
“It’s quiet today. There’s nothing to mind—”
“There’s always something. I’m never bored.”
“You haven’t been out of town in weeks,” Jess said, impatient. “It’d do you good.”
“I have plans, Jess.”
Olivia could see their mother wasn’t about to budge and would only get her back up and go on the defensive if Jess kept pushing her. “I’m heading over to see Grandma. Care to join me?”
“You go, Liv,” her mother said, dropping back to her chair at her desk. “Tell your grandma I said hi. We’re having her out to the house this weekend. I’m doing a Sunday dinner for a change. You two will both be here?”
“Of course, Mom,” Jess said with a sigh, then left.
Louise Frost stared at the spot her younger daughter had vacated, then finally said, half under her breath, that she needed to get to work and started tapping keys on her computer. Olivia said goodbye and headed back out.
She found her sister standing on the rock wall at the edge of the millpond. “You can’t enable her, Liv.” Jess shoved her hands in her coat pockets and watched the rushing water, high with the spring runoff and yesterday’s rain. “It won’t help.”
“Arguing with her isn’t going to change anything.”
“What will? Medication? Therapy? Some herbal potion?”
“There are a number of herbs that can help alleviate anxiety, but she has to want to do something about it.”
“Planning a trip she’ll never take…”
“Maybe she will take it,” Olivia said.
“Dad doesn’t think so. It’s pathetic, Liv. She didn’t used to be this bad.”
Olivia watched a dead leaf float over the small dam into the rushing stream below. “I think she’s trying, Jess.”
Jess didn’t respond at once. The only sound was the rush of the water over the old dam. “I’m worried I’m catching it,” she said finally.
“Catching what, Jess?”
“Mom’s anxiety. I woke up last night in a sweat and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was ready to jump out of my skin. The power was out....” She pulled her hands out of her pockets and raked her fingers through her hair. “I turned on a flashlight and just sat there, trying to calm myself.”
“The weather was nasty.”
“Freezing rain, clouds, fog, darker than the pits of hell…” Jess shuddered. “I felt closed in. I couldn’t breathe.”
“We’re all feeling closed in after the long winter. Green grass and daffodils will help. What about Mark? Was he—”
“He wasn’t here. He never stays past sunup. We’re old-fashioned that way, with Mom and Dad right up the road, working here.” She squatted down suddenly, picked up a stone and flung it into the millpond as she stood again, the ripples spreading across the clear, coppery water to the opposite bank. “What if I was freaked out at the prospect of going to Boston today?”
“Did that run through your mind?”
“Everything ran through my mind.”
“Who are you seeing in Boston?”
“The manager of a small law office in the North End that wants to redo the interior of their building, the owners of a house on Beacon Hill, a hole-in-the-wall library that specializes in early New England history. It’ll take all day.”
“You’re feeling the stress,” Olivia said.
Her sister almost laughed. “I hope that’s all it is. I hope I’m not…” She didn’t finish. “There’s so much I want to do, Liv. I don’t want to be afraid to leave Knights Bridge. What about you? You won’t fly.”
Olivia averted her eyes. “I’ll fly.”
“Ha. You’re not a good liar.” Jess abandoned the subject and spun away from the dam. “Mom’s driving us all crazy. She’s driving Dad crazy, too, but he’ll never admit it. Mark hasn’t said anything but I know he’s getting impatient.”
“Jess, is anything going on between you two?”
“Nothing, no—” She stopped, turned back to Olivia. “I don’t know. This California trip has taken on a life of its own. I sometimes wonder if Mark’s waiting to see how it turns out, if he looks at Mom and sees me in twenty or thirty years. She’s a mess, Liv. You haven’t been around day to day. You haven’t seen her.”
“I know but I’m here now.”
“We all are so busy. You, me, Mark, Dad, Mom. My hours have been insane since January. It’s a sign business is good, which is terrific, but I have to do almost all the off-site
