let her mother hustle her in and down the polished hall, because it was easier than trying to stop the tidal wave of Anna Lee. They took a left and entered the rarely used formal sitting room, where cushions held their shape and dust motes held their breath.
In five seconds, Meri realized why her mother had led her here. The room glistened with gold and silver, shining on glass shelves mounted against two walls. A rainbow of ribbons hung from a custom-made display rack, while a thousand rhinestones sparkled their way through the rows and rows of crowns.
Meri sat on the stiff white love seat, its curved lion’s feet pairing alongside her nude pumps. Her mother perched on the rose-colored armchair across the room, divided from her daughter by an oval mahogany coffee table and an Aubusson carpet that had cost more than a small car. The antique grandfather clock in the corner ticked away the moments with a beat of heavy, unspoken expectations.
Meri shifted in her seat. God, it was like being in a mausoleum. “Momma, wouldn’t we be more comfortable on the back porch?”
Her mother waved off that suggestion. “There are men out there.”
She said the word men as if referring to a plague of locusts. Anna Lee never had liked to be around those who performed manual labor. Maybe she was worried they might put a broom or a hammer in her hands.
“They are building a gazebo,” Anna Lee went on. “You know me, always changing this, fixing that.”
“Making everything perfect, especially your daughter.” The words sprang from Meri’s lips like a cobra waiting to strike. And she’d tried so hard to be polite and dutiful. That had lasted, oh, five seconds.
Anna Lee’s brows furrowed. “All I ever wanted was for you to be all you could be. You were always such a beautiful girl, so capable of—”
“I am not here to talk about might-have-beens, Momma. I’m no longer a beauty queen.”
“You will always be a beauty queen. That’s something no one can take from you. Why, look at all these crowns.” Anna Lee gestured toward the sparkling tiaras, the ribbons, the trophies, all reminders of a different time, a different Meri. “They prove you are the most beautiful girl in all the world.”
Meri sighed. “I’m not that person anymore, Momma.”
Anna Lee went on, as if she hadn’t heard Meri speak. “You could have been Miss America, if you had...” She pursed her lips. “Well, that’s neither here nor there.”
They’d had this argument a thousand times over the years. Some days Meri felt like she was arguing with herself, for all Anna Lee heard. “Momma, please. Let’s not get into that again.”
Anna Lee reached a hand toward her daughter’s face, toward the pale red scar that arced down Meri’s cheek like an angry crescent moon. “If you’d just let me take you to Doc Archer, he could fix you up and make you perfect again.”
“Don’t start, Momma. Just don’t start.”
Anna Lee let out a long sigh. “Well, you think about it.”
Meri had thought about it almost every day for the past three months, since the attack that had left her with the scar, changed in a thousand ways. But her mother still saw her as the same girl who had won a hundred beauty pageants, the one who had been destined for Miss America before she ran out of town and ditched everything and everyone.
She should have stayed in the car, kept driving, and avoided this senseless argument. When was she going to accept that her mother was never going to change?
Meri got to her feet and summoned up a little more patience. If she could have avoided stopping here, she would have, but after talking to Grandpa Ray a couple days ago, she’d been hell-bent on getting home and seeing him again. Which meant, for now, dealing with her mother. “Can I please get the key to the cottage so I can get settled in?”
Her mother waved behind her. “It’s in the same place as always. Though I don’t understand why you’d insist on staying in that shack when Geraldine made up the bed in your old room.”
Meri didn’t answer that. She crossed to the antique rolltop desk, pulled out one of the tiny drawers on the right-hand side and retrieved an old skeleton key. When she was a little girl, her daddy would use the guest cottage on the weekends for fishing—and, Meri suspected, time away from Momma and her endless list of expectations. A few times, Daddy had taken Meri along. She’d reveled in those days—when she could get muddy and messy, with no one around to straighten her hair or fuss over her meal choices.
As soon as Meri curled her palm around the heavy key, she was sixteen again in her mind, on a starlit night at Stone Gap Lake. She’d snuck down to the cottage with Jack, nervous and excited and completely infatuated. She’d been too foolish, too eager to prove she was mature and ready for what Jack wanted. In the end, she’d sat alone on the bank of the lake, confused and heartbroken.
Her cousin Eli had found her and driven her home, and helped her sneak up the rose trellis to her room before her mother found out she was gone.
Eli.
God, how could he be gone? Just being here, it seemed as if her cousin, with his giant personality, was still alive, that she’d see him at Sunday church or hanging out in the drive-through of the Quickie Burger. He was her best friend, one of the few people who could tease her out of a bad mood or a bad day, and more like a brother than a cousin. But in her head she could still hear that heartbreaking call from her aunt last year, telling Meri he was gone. The realization hit her anew with a sharp ache.
Meri drew in a breath, then tucked the key in her pocket and turned back to her mother. All Meri wanted to do was go see her grandfather, the most sane person on her father’s side of the family. “Have you seen Grandpa Ray?”
“I have had a number of commitments. Something I’m not sure you remember, Meredith Lee.”
The use of her formal name told Meri two things—one, her mother was trying to gain control of the situation, and two, she was gearing up to launch a criticism masquerading as a compliment. “I’m not here to discuss the past or what I’m doing with my present, Momma. I’m here to see Grandpa Ray, and be with him for as long as...” The words caught in her throat.
Too many losses. Meri couldn’t take another. Not now.
Her mother pursed her lips, then nodded. She waved a delicate, manicured hand. “Then go, go. But be back in time for supper. Geraldine is making roast chicken. She made up your bed with those floral sheets you like, if you change your mind about where you want to stay.”
Meri sighed. “You knew I wasn’t staying here. Grandpa needs me, so I’m staying at the cottage. Nobody’s living there, and it’s right next door.”
“Why, Meredith Lee, that is akin to sleeping in the woods. Your grandfather lives like a heathen and that guest cottage of his is no better. Good Lord, when was the last time he cleaned it? It could be positively infested. I don’t think anyone has been there since your father used to go for his fishing weekends.”
“Just because Grandpa Ray lives in a modest house and doesn’t give a rat’s a—” she cut off the curse before it fully formed “—care about what people think of the way he lives doesn’t make him a heathen.”
“Geraldine
