sure Mama will be pleased by the check. She probably will hardly even notice your absence, since all the others are coming. Every single one. Mama Freda has fostered twenty-three kids over the years. Ross Chillington is clearing his filming schedule. Michael Boylston works in Thailand and he’s coming. Reed Patterson is leaving football training camp in Florida to be here.”
“All those wayward boys saved by Mama Freda.” His voice was silky and unimpressed.
“She’s made a difference in the world!”
“Lucy—”
She hated it that her name on his lips made her feel more frazzled, hated it that she could remember leaning toward him, quivering with wanting.
“I’m not interested in being part of Lindstrom Beach’s version of a TV reality show. What are you planning after your black-tie dinner? No, wait. Let me guess. Each of Mama’s foster children will stand up and give a testimonial about being redeemed by her love.”
Ouch. That was a little too close to what she did have planned. Did he have to make it sound cheap and smarmy instead of uplifting and inspirational?
“Mac—”
“Nobody calls me Mac anymore,” he said, a little harshly.
“What do they call you?” She couldn’t imagine him being called anything else.
“Mr. Hudson,” he said coolly.
She doubted that very much since, she could still hear a raucous partylike atmosphere unfolding behind him.
It occurred to her she would like to hang up on him. And she was going to, very shortly.
“Okay, then, Mr. Hudson,” she snapped, “I’ve already told you I don’t care if you don’t come. I know it’s way too much to ask of you to take a break from your important and busy schedule to honor the woman who took you in and pulled you back from the brink of disaster. Way too much.”
Silence.
“Still, I know how deeply you care about her. I know it’s you who has been paying some of her bills.”
He sucked in his breath, annoyed that she knew that.
She pushed on. “Aside from your Mother’s Day tradition, I know you took her to Paris for her seventyfifth birthday.”
“Lucy, I’m dripping water on the floor and shivering, so if you could hurry this along.”
She really had thought she could get through her life without seeing him again. It had been a blessing that he came back to Lindstrom Beach rarely, and when he had, she had been away.
Because how could she look at him without remembering? But then hadn’t she discovered you could remember, regardless?
Once, a long, long time ago, she had tried, with a desperation so keen she could almost taste its bitterness on her tongue, to pry his secrets from him. Lying on the sand in the dark, the lake’s night-blackened waters lapping quietly, the embers of their fire burning down, she had asked him to tell her how he had ended up in foster care at Mama Freda’s.
“I killed a man,” he whispered, and then into her shocked silence, he had laughed that laugh that was so charming and distracting and sensual, that laugh that hid everything he really was, and added, “With my bare hands.”
And then he had tried to divert her with his kisses that burned hotter than the fire.
But he had been unable to give her the gift she needed most: his trust in her.
And that was the real reason she had told him she could never love a boy like him. Because, even in her youth, she had recognized that he held back something essential of himself from her, when she had held back nothing.
If he had chosen to think she was a snob looking down her nose at the likes of him, after all the time they had spent together that summer, then that was his problem.
Still, just thinking of those forbidden kisses of so many years ago sent an unwanted shiver down her spine. The truth was nobody wanted Mac to come back here less than she did.
“I didn’t phone about Mama’s party. I guess I thought I would tell you this when you came. But since you’re not going to—”
“Tell me what?”
She had to keep on track, or she would be swamped by these memories.
“Mac—” she remembered, too late, he didn’t want to be called that and plunged on “—something’s wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“You knew Mama Freda lost her driver’s license, didn’t you?”
“No.”
“She had a little accident in the winter. Nothing serious. She slid through a stop sign and took out Mary-Beth McQueen’s fence and rose bed.”
“Ha. I doubt if that was an accident. She aimed.”
For a moment, something was shared between them. The rivalry between Mama and Mary-Beth when it came to roses was legendary. But the moment was a flicker, nothing more.
All business again, he said, “But you said it wasn’t serious?”
“Nonetheless, she had to see a doctor and be retested. They revoked her license.”
“I’ll set her up an account at Ferdinand’s Taxi.”
“I don’t mind driving her. I like it actually. My concern was that before the retesting I don’t think she’d been to a doctor in twenty years.”
“Thirty,” he said. “She had her ‘elixir.’”
Lucy was sure she heard him shudder. It was funny to think of him being petrified of a little homemade potion. The Mac of her memory had been devil-maycare and terrifyingly fearless. From the picture on his website, that much had not changed.
“I guess the elixir isn’t working for her anymore,” Lucy said carefully. “I drive her now. She’s had three doctors’ appointments in the last month.”
“What’s wrong?”
“According to her, nothing.”
Silence. She understood the silence. He was wondering why Mama Freda hadn’t told him about the driver’s license, the doctor’s appointments. He was guessing, correctly, that she would not want him to worry.
“It probably is nothing,” he said, but his voice was uneasy.
“I told myself that, too. I don’t want to believe she’s eighty, either.”
“There’s something you aren’t telling me.”
Scary, that after all these years, and over the phone, he could do that. Read her. So, why hadn’t he seen through her the only time it really mattered?
I
