a sigh, Mia threw the trio of dead bolts and swung open the door, hanging on to the two-inch-thick (a half-inch of which was paint) slab for support. She smiled. Then frowned. Under a maroon bob, every wrinkle the old woman possessed screamed “bad news.”
“We lost, bubelah. The slimeball can’t kick us out until our leases are up, but there’s no renewing them. We either have to buy or leave. The lawyer said we could contest it, drag it out a little longer, but the legal fund’s all used up already. And the longer we wait, he says, the more it’s gonna cost to buy in.”
It was just as well Mia hadn’t eaten yet, because God knows her stomach’s contents would have made a reappearance. All over poor Mrs. Epstein. She muttered a not-nice word, which got a nod and a “You said it, sweetheart” from the old woman before she shuffled off to spread the joyous news.
Mia shut the heavy door, sliding down onto the floor with her head in her hands.
No way could she afford to buy her apartment. She’d used up nearly her entire savings as seed money for her business; only in the last few months had she been able to start repaying herself, but it would be a good year or two before she’d brought her reserves back up to what they once were. So forget the odd twenty or so grand necessary for a down payment. She didn’t even have the thinnest of cushions to keep her from starving if for some reason she couldn’t work. And mortgage companies didn’t exactly welcome the self-employed—especially when the self-employed were, for all intents and purposes, dirt poor—with open arms.
And the best part of all this? Her lease was up in two weeks.
Two weeks.
She was one seriously screwed chick.
Chapter Three
“For heaven’s sake, Grant—it’s freezing out here!”
Even though they were in the sun—and it was in the mid-fifties, to boot—Grant’s mother clutched the suede-trimmed collar of her plaid wool blazer, shivering up a storm as they stood at the edge of the circular drive fronting the house. “Of course Haley misses her mother,” Elizabeth “Bitsy” Braeburn said, her voice far chillier than the temperature. Sunlight glinted coldly off her severely pulled-back blond hair. “That doesn’t give her license to rule the roost. And if you don’t exercise some control over the child now, God help us all when she gets to be a teenager.”
“She’s not even four, Mother,” Grant said in a low voice, his hands balled in the pockets of his leather bomber jacket, thinking, You should only know how much control I’m exercising right now. “She doesn’t even understand yet that Justine’s dead.”
“Then tell her again.”
“I have. Repeatedly. As has Etta. The concept means nothing to her.” He tore his gaze away from his daughter—all bundled up in sweaters and fleece-lined everything, sitting cross-legged in the leaf-cluttered grass with Henry in her lap as she kept an eagle eye on the ten-foot-tall entry gate—to look at his mother. Who, for reasons not yet clear, had shown up uninvited a half hour before, impeccably coiffed and tastefully accessorized, as always. “And according to the psychologist, there’s not a damn thing I, or anyone, can do to force things.” He looked back. “When she’s ready to accept Justine’s death, she will.”
The vigil had begun yesterday morning, when Haley announced she was going outside to “wait for Mommy.” Both Etta and Grant had patiently repeated the whole heaven thing, only to be met with an unsettling “Have you ever seen heaven?” When he had to admit that, no, he hadn’t, a tiny chin went up in the air, followed by “Then how do you know it’s real?”
A particularly thorny question to ask someone who didn’t, in fact, “know” anything of the sort. But what was the alternative? At the moment, letting Haley believe her mother was somewhere else seemed a far better option than trying to explain that Justine no longer was.
But who knew the “somewhere else” would prove to be the sticking point, that in Haley’s bright but still developing mind, being somewhere else meant that, at some point, a person could return. Clearly convinced—and rightly so—that her mother would never simply leave her, she simply couldn’t comprehend that Justine wasn’t coming back.
Hence the vigil. And since Grant couldn’t see letting a three-year-old sit outside by herself for hours on end, here he, and his trusty BlackBerry, were. Never mind that, when he asked Haley if she’d like company, her only response was a “suit yourself” shrug.
At least this morning there really was someone to wait for: Mia. Who should be arriving any minute. Hell. His mother hadn’t exactly taken to Justine; he could only imagine what she thought of Mia, with whom she’d only dealt with in the context of the wedding, five years before.
“For God’s sake,” Grant said as his mother’s shivering increased. “Go inside and get warm. I’m sure Etta’s got the coffeepot on—”
“Who on earth is that at the gate?” Bitsy said, shielding her eyes from the sun.
Speaking of the devil. Or—loath as Grant was to admit it—more likely a godsend, he thought as he caught sight of Mia’s old minivan, growling impatiently as it waited for Etta to buzz the gate open.
“That can’t be right,” his mother said as the gates slowly groaned apart. “Grant, you simply must speak to Etta—she can’t go letting in every Tom, Dick and Harry who wanders down the drive by mistake!”
“It’s not a mistake.” Grant said quietly, ignoring his mother’s flummoxed expression as Haley scrambled to her feet, showing her first signs of enthusiasm in two days. “Stay on the grass!” Grant yelled when the little girl started running toward the drive, almost amazed when she actually stopped. As the van passed, Haley spun around, her small legs pumping as she raced it up to the house. A minute later, Mia and his daughter were a tangle of arms and kisses, and his mother—being possessed of a one-hundred-gigabyte memory—said, “Why is she here?”
“Did you bring Mommy?” Haley asked, trying to peer around Mia to see inside the van.
After the briefest of glances in Grant’s direction, Mia crouched in front of the child, shaking her head. “No, sweetie,” she said softly. “Remember? Mommy’s not alive anymore.” She gently tugged a curl. “So you can’t see her. Nobody can.”
Haley regarded Mia for a moment or two before her thumb went into her mouth, her other arm strangling the poor stuffed toy around its neck. Then she settled into Mia’s arms again, her curls flattened against Mia’s bulky sweater, and Grant’s throat tightened.
“That’s why she’s here,” he pushed out. When, however, he noticed Mia’s struggle to stand with Haley clinging to her, he strode over to relieve her of the child, in a move both unpremeditated and instinctive.
Now on her feet, and clearly oblivious to the bits of leaves and dirt on the knees of her jeans, Mia’s eyes darted from Haley—who, while not exactly relaxed in his arms, wasn’t squirming to get down, either—to Grant. A small smile toyed with her mouth before she turned to Grant’s mother, who’d joined them. The smile stretched a little further.
“Mrs. Braeburn,” she said smoothly, extending her hand. “It’s been a long time. How are you?”
A moment passed before his mother apparently decided it wouldn’t kill her to remove her hand from her pocket
