Julia should have known that her mother would nag her for the details of everything that
had happened in Cambria. And who could blame her, really? If Julia had borne the
an illegitimate child of some California billionaire, and then that child had grown up and
gone out there to meet the family he'd never known, she'd sure as hell want to get the
blow-by-blow dish on how that had gone.
Still, Julia wasn't up for talking to her mother right now. She felt so emotionally raw
after her experience on the West Coast that she didn't feel ready to rehash it with
Isabelle. And part of her worried that her mother would immediately sense that Julia had
fallen for a Delaney. After all, who better to recognize the signs than someone who'd
been through it herself?
Isabelle had always been able to read Julia's emotions on her face. If Julia talked to
her now, she'd be too exposed. She wanted to keep this heartache safe, where her mother
couldn't poke at it and reopen the wound.
On her first full day back in Bozeman, Julia ignored three phone calls from her
mother and answered four texts with the minimal amount of information she could get
away with. Yes, she was home. Yes, things had gone fine. No, she didn't know if Drew
had returned home from Cambria yet. No, she couldn't talk; she had too much work to
do.
That last part was a line of crap. While it was accurate that Julia had work she should
have been doing to prepare for the hotel job that was coming up, she wasn't doing it. She
was mostly wallowing in her heartbreak. She stayed in her pajamas until noon and ate a
pint of Ben & Jerry's for breakfast, and that helped somewhat. She listened to Colin's
voice mail message no fewer than ten times, and that didn't help at all.
She managed to put Isabelle off for a couple of days, which was a better result than
Julia had expected. When her mother showed up on her doorstep on a gloomy
Wednesday afternoon, Julia was past the pajamas and ice cream phase and had moved on
into a mostly manageable sadness.
Apparently, she didn't have a lock on sadness; when she opened her front door and
found Isabelle standing there with pink cheeks from the cold and the slushy remains of
snow on her boots, Julia could clearly see that Isabelle had been feeling some of it
herself. The older woman's face was lined with worry, and her eyes were rimmed with
red, as though she'd been crying.
"Mom." All at once, Julia started to feel guilty about the way she'd brushed her
mother aside when she'd gotten home from California. Julia hadn't wanted to deal with
her mother's neuroses, but she'd forgotten that all of the events involving Drew and the
Delaneys had been difficult for Isabelle, too.
She stepped aside to let Isabelle into the overheated house. Isabelle came in and
removed the snowy boots and her other winter gear. She put the boots on a mat by the
door and hung her other things on the coat rack. Only then, when she was standing in her
thick socks in Julia's living room, did she give Julia the reproachful look that she
probably deserved.
"I'm sorry I didn't return your calls," Julia said lamely. "It's just, I had a lot to do
when I got home, and …"
"You were avoiding me," Isabelle stated, her mouth tensed in a way that emphasized
the fine lines in her skin as they feathered away from her mouth.
"Well …" Julia's shoulders fell. "Yeah. Maybe."
"But why?"
"It's just … It's all been a lot to deal with, that's all."
Her mother glared at her. "Well, Julia, it has been for me, too." Then Isabelle's face
softened. "Honey? Are you okay?"
Was it that obvious that she wasn't? She knew her mother could read her, but she
hadn't expected her to manage it quite so fast.
"Come on into the kitchen," Julia said. "I'll make coffee." This was likely to be a
long conversation, and Julia didn't think she could manage it without caffeine.
"Well … why did Liam think that any of this was Drew's fault? Drew was as
blindsided by all of this as anyone."
Isabelle was seated at Julia's kitchen table with a mug of coffee in her hands. She
looked both stunned and pained by Julia's recounting of the events that had taken place in
Cambria—a recounting that had strategically omitted her own involvement with Colin
Delaney.
"I don't think he really blamed Drew," Julia said. "I think Liam is grieving over his
uncle, and he didn't know how else to express it. He's not exactly the kind of guy who's
comfortable talking about his feelings."
"Neither was Redmond," Isabelle said. She seemed like she was somewhere far
away, wrapped up in her memories. A faint smile played on her lips. "He was such a
man's man. Stoic. Strong. I know it must have hurt him when we stopped seeing each
other, but he never said it." Her eyes became shiny, and she blinked a few times.
"Mom?" Julia's voice was soft. "Why did you do it? Why did you …"
"Why did I cheat on your father?" Isabelle filled in the words Julia couldn't seem to
say.
"Well, yeah."
Isabelle was quiet for a while, thinking about how to respond. Maybe she didn't
know the answer herself, or maybe she was just figuring out how best to frame it so Julia
could understand.
Finally, she looked at Julia with tired, sad eyes.
"Redmond Delaney was the love of my life."
The simple truth of it took Julia's breath away.
"He wasn't like anyone I'd ever met," Isabelle went on. "It was like we'd known
each other forever. I knew what we were doing to Andrew was wrong, but … Oh, honey.
I couldn't have done anything else."
Listening to her mother, Julia realized that she hadn't been considering Isabelle's
point of view before now—not really. She'd seen her mother's actions as scandalous,
careless, a betrayal. And while she wasn't ready to accept the idea that Isabelle had been
anything but wrong to cheat on her husband, Julia began to wonder if the situation might
be more multidimensional than she'd thought.
"You loved him," Julia said, absorbing what her mother had told her. "And
Redmond … Do you think he loved you?"
"I know he did. He would have married me. He wanted me to leave Andrew."
Julia thought of the life she would have had as part of the Delaney family—insanely
wealthy, but separated from her father. She couldn't imagine what that would have been
like—living without her father's reassuring, steadfast presence every day.
"Why didn't you?" Julia's voice broke at the thought. "If you loved him, then
why?"
"Andrew was my husband," she said. "I made a vow. And he was a good man. I
wasn't in love with your father, not like I should have been. But I did care for him, and he
didn't deserve what I did. He didn't deserve to be left." Isabelle looked up from the
tabletop and focused on Julia. "And then there was you. You were so little, and you
adored your daddy so much. I couldn't do that to you."
Julia wanted to ask her mother so many questions: How had she and Redmond met?
What was he like? How did she keep the affair a secret from Julia's father? How had she
felt when she'd heard about Redmond's death?
She couldn't ask the questions, though, because she could barely absorb what she'd
been told. The information made Julia reevaluate everything she'd thought she'd known
about her childhood and her family. Julia sat mutely at the table, staring at her mug of
coffee that had now grown cold.
"How is Drew?" Isabelle asked when the silence became too much for either of
them.As far as Julia was concerned, this change of topic didn't help matters.
"I don't know," she said. "I don't even know if he's still in Cambria. He … We had
a fight. It didn't end well."
"What kind of fight? About what?" Isabelle's voice began to rise.
Julia considered lying to her mother—she could make up some story, something that
wouldn't result in a difficult conversation she didn't want to have. But Isabelle could read
her too easily. And anyway, there had already been too many lies.
"About me. And Colin Delaney." She couldn't meet her mother's gaze, and so she
got up from the table and made a big production of rinsing her coffee mug in the sink.
"What about you and Colin Delaney?" Isabelle asked. She'd taken the insistent,
the somewhat accusing tone of a mother who knows her child has misbehaved in some
highly predictable and yet infuriating way.
Julia set the mug down on the countertop and turned to face her mother. "I went out
with him. We … were dating." Julia wondered if her mother would understand that
dating was code for getting naked and having mind-blowing sex. Given Isabelle's own
history with a Delaney man, she probably did.
"You're dating one of the Delaneys," Isabelle repeated, as though the information
were so improbable she thought she had to carefully confirm it.
"Was. I was dating him. But that's over now. So over." Just saying the words caused
a new pain to jab Julia's heart.
"What happened? Why did it end?"
Julia considered how much she should say. On one hand, telling her mother about
her love life was awkward. They'd never had the kind of relationship some mothers and
daughters had; she'd never come to her mother with her hopes and fears regarding the
men in her life. But she needed to talk to someone about it, and Isabelle was here.
"Liam went nuts when he saw us kissing, and he attacked Colin. And then Drew
found out about it, and that was almost as bad. He didn't hit anybody, but I think he
wanted to." The memory of that caused tears to spring to her eyes.
Isabelle leaned back in her chair and regarded Julia with a frown. "I still don't see
what that has to do with you and Colin."
"Of course it has to do with me and Colin! Of course, it does! If we'd kept seeing
each other, it would have torn both of our families apart!"
Isabelle narrowed her eyes at Julia. "That's a little dramatic, honey. It's not like you
two are Romeo and Juliet."
"But Drew said I betrayed him!" She remembered the look on Drew's face, the hurt
she saw there and pushed the image away.
"Honey. Just because he felt like you betrayed him doesn't mean you actually did.
Who you date is your business. Drew's feelings about it are his own issue." Rarely had
she heard her mother make quite this much sense. It was unsettling.
"But …"
"But nothing. Since when do you let your little brother tell you what to do, Julia?"
"Well, I don't, but …"
"Listen, honey. What I did to your brother was wrong. I shouldn't have kept that
kind of secret from him. I thought I was doing the right thing at the time, but I didn't
consider what it would do to him if he found out the truth on his own someday. It hurt
him, and I'm deeply sorry for that."
Julia started to say something, but Isabelle interrupted her.
"But he's going to have to find a way to get past it, to move forward." She shook her
head. "He's got so much anger inside him, and it's just not good for him. It's not good for
anybody. All of that anger is hurting him, but you can't let it hurt you, too."
Julia understood what her mother was saying, and she saw the wisdom in it. But at
the same time, it would always be her instinct to protect her little brother, to shield him
from anything she thought might be a threat to him. She'd done it when they were kids,
and she was still doing it now. How could she just … stop?
"I see what you're saying, Mom. I really do. But you didn't see his face. You
weren't there." If Isabelle had seen Drew's eyes when he'd found out about her and Colin
—if she'd seen the hurt in them, the judgment—then surely she'd feel differently.
"I think I'm familiar with your brother's moods," Isabelle says wryly. "I think I ought
to be after I raised him."
Julia came back to the table and sat in the chair across from Isabelle. She slumped
down in defeat. "It's not just that. It's not just drawing."
"Well, what else, then?" Isabelle was looking at her with such love and concern, it
made Julia feel sorry for the distance that had formed between them over the past few
years. She'd convinced herself that she didn't need her mother, but in fact, she did.
"It's just … Colin is obscenely rich. And … and he's so …" She gestured vaguely
with her hands to indicate the entire, profound scope of male beauty. "Have you seen
him?"
Isabelle chuckled lightly. "Honey, I've seen him."
"Well, then you know what I'm trying to say!"
"I'm afraid I don't." Isabelle crossed her arms on the tabletop and peered at Julia
with interest.
"What would a man like that want with me?" She gestured at herself, indicating with
a sweep of her arm her old hoodie, her faded jeans, her messy ponytail. "He wears
Ferragamo shoes, for God's sake. He's the tenth most eligible bachelor in business!"
"He's … Honey, he's what?"
"According to Fortune magazine," Julia clarified. "Liam is fifteenth. I'm thinking
that must have been awkward around the dinner table."
"Sweetheart … Are you saying you think you're not good enough for him? Because
that's just—"
"No! Yes. Maybe. Or … maybe it's just that we're from entirely different worlds,
you know? He's from a world where people dress up in designer clothes and eat meals
with way too many utensils. Well, the rest of his family doesn't do those things, but he
does. He went to Harvard Law!"
It just all felt so hopeless.
"You stopped seeing a good-looking man you really like because he went to Harvard
Law? I've got to tell you, honey, I wouldn't have considered that a deal-breaker."
Julia looked at her mother and saw a hint of a smile on her face.
"You're making fun of me."
"Just a little, sweetie." Isabelle reached across the table and took Julia's hand. "Do
you like him?"
Julia felt tears welling up in her eyes. "I like him so much it's making me irrational."
There was that whisper of a smile again. "Well, Julia, I can't really argue with that."
This was what it had come to Julia's mother, who wasn't exactly known these days
for making wise decisions when it came to love, was ridiculing her for her relationship
choices. That had to be some kind of rock bottom.
As though reading her mind, Isabelle said, "Look. I know I don't have all that much
credibility on this subject right now. But I've learned a few things the hard way.
Redmond was my soul mate. And I let him go."
Julia gaped at her. "Are you saying you wish you'd left Dad?"
Isabelle squeezed her hand. "I'm not saying that. I'm just saying … I never stopped
loving Redmond. And it never stopped hurting."