we agreed?” Christine said to David. They had to be on the same page if they had any hope of her plan working.
“Chill, okay?” David said. “I got it.”
“We’ll have fun anyway,” Aurora pretended to whisper behind her hand. That was typical Aurora. When she’d visited, she’d let David sip mescal, skip dinner and stay up all night watching vampire movies that gave him nightmares for a week.
David, of course, had adored her.
“Here we go.” Bogie set down a plate of creamy cheese and big triangles of pita bread.
“Sit down, you two,” Aurora said, spreading blobs of the cheese onto the pita, then handing them out. “Eat, Bogie,” she said. “Since the radiation, he hardly eats.”
“I do fine,” he said. “I have…uh…medicine.”
Christine felt a twinge of worry. Bogie grew a few marijuana plants for medicinal use, since pot was good for pain suppression, nausea and poor appetite. He’d promised to never smoke around David and to keep his half-hidden grow-room locked.
In the old days pot had been everywhere at Harmony House, a fact that had annoyed Christine immensely, since it led to so much silly, lazy behavior in the grown-ups.
Christine took a bite of the pita. The cheese was lemony and so delicate it melted like butter on her tongue. “Mmm,” she said, then sipped the rose-hip tea, which tasted fresh and healthy.
David grimaced at the tea and barely nibbled the pita. He was a junk-food maniac, so the grow-your-own meals would be an adjustment for him. She’d take him to Parsons Foods in town for a stash of processed sugar and sodium nitrates. She had enough issues with David. Nutrition could wait.
“You’ll love Doctor Mike, David,” Aurora said. “He’s brilliant. So intuitive. He sees right into you.”
David shrugged, not enthused about the counseling. The guy would have to be good to get through to him.
“If you don’t like him, we’ve got Doctor B.,” Aurora said.
“Doctor B.?” Christine asked.
“Marcus Barnard. He’s a big shrink in LA. He’s working on a book while he’s here.”
So the man in the garden was a psychiatrist. That certainly explained his cool formality and intense gaze, along with his attempt to interpret Aurora’s obstinacy for her.
“He’s a hard worker, too,” Bogie said. “A good thing since we’re low on residents right now. Lucy—she runs the clay works operation—thinks you should hire part-time kids, Crystal.”
“Crystal doesn’t need to mess with any hiring,” Aurora grumbled. “I’ll be back in a week.”
“The heart doctor said six weeks,” Bogie said quietly.
“We’re here to work, Aurora,” Christine said. Bogie had warned her that her mother might resist help.
“You’ll have your hands full with the animals, the gardens and Bogie’s greenhouse,” Aurora said.
“Let’s just see how it goes.” If she had to hog-tie her mother to her bed to make her take it easy, she would. She’d need her A game to manage Aurora, that was clear.
Christine was a pro at finessing difficult clients, but here with her mother in the Harmony House kitchen, she felt herself shrinking into her childhood self, like Alice in Wonderland eating the cake that made her very small.
“If that travel article brings more folks out, we’ll have more hands,” Bogie said.
“There was an article?” Christine asked.
“It was about out-of-the-way travel spots. It said we’re the oldest continuously inhabited commune in the western U.S. We got a couple of hikers from Tucson due to the story.”
“Harmony House is the oldest?” That fact fired up Christine’s professional instincts. “We could market that in ads, up your census, then raise your rates.” It was a relief to talk about something she knew how to do.
“We don’t have rates,” Aurora said. “We ask for a contribution to cover food and laundry services and whatnot.”
“What about your cash flow? Is it predictable?” Christine’s mind was spinning with the key questions she’d ask a client.
“This is a commune,” David said. “It’s about living off what you produce and being sustainable. It’s not about cash.”
Thank you, Brigitte. “Even Harmony House needs income.” She pointed at the Parsons Foods bag on the counter. “I doubt the grocery story lets them barter.”
“They do buy our eggs and goat cheese,” Bogie said.
David made an impatient sound. “Just because your job is getting people to buy crap they don’t need, doesn’t mean the rest of us want to live that way.” He was showing off for Aurora and Bogie, she could tell.
“It was my evil capitalist job that paid for your cell phone, laptop and Xbox,” she said, hoping he would joke back.
“Whatever, Christine.”
She winced. Calling her by her first name was another Brigitte brainstorm: We’re all peers on this planet. But Christine was not about to object at the moment. She had to pick her battles or they’d be in a never-ending war.
“Hell, we all start where we are and do what we can, right, Crystal?” Aurora said, surprising Christine with her kindness. Maybe her mother’s brush with death had softened her a little. “Your boss is cool with you taking off the summer?”
“I’ve brought projects to do from here.” If the commune work tied her up too much, she’d have to dip into savings, but that would be fine. Within a year, she intended to leave Vance Advertising and open her own agency. “The main thing is for you to get your strength back.”
Her mother bristled. “I am not an—”
“Invalid, yeah. That’s what you said.”
“And I mean it,” her mother said sharply. Except the emotion that flashed in her eyes wasn’t anger. It was fear. A chill climbed Christine’s spine. She’d never seen Aurora afraid and it made the world tilt on its axis. Aurora was clearly weaker than she wanted to be. Oh, dear.
“How about we get you settled in now and tomorrow Aurora can show you around the clay works?” Bogie said, evidently trying to smooth the moment.
“That sounds great,” Christine said before her mother could object. “So I’ll stay in my old room and put David in the spare one next door?” Christine and Aurora had lived in the old boarding house owners’ quarters at the back of the building.
“The spare’s got furniture at the moment,” Bogie said. “We could move it if you like.”
“Nonsense,” Aurora said. “David can pick one of the empty rooms on
