Nine Lives (Lily Dale Mystery #1)(35)

“Your regular service person should have caught it.”

Yes, he might have. If she had one.

Reading into her pause, Millicent asks, “You do take the car in for regular service?”

She does not.

“So you set out on a thousand-mile drive without having had the car serviced in God knows how long?”

“Millicent, Sam always took care of that, and I’ve had my hands full just trying to get through the last six months. I’ve tried my best, but . . .” She pauses to swallow a lump in her throat.

Don’t you dare cry.

Hearing Millicent’s heavy sigh, she anticipates an apology. Instead, she says, “I don’t know how many times I have to tell you to please call me Mother, Isabella.”

Mother. If only she had a mother right now—someone warm and nurturing who would assure her that she’s done a fine job picking up the pieces so far, someone who’d promise that everything is going to be all right—someone to make everything all right.

After her mother died, her mother’s best friend—Bella’s godmother, Aunt Sophie—did her best to fill that role. But she, too, is gone now. And so is Daddy. And Sam.

Everyone who ever took care of me. Everyone I could have turned to at a time like this.

She swallows hard. Clears her throat. Swallows again.

Don’t you dare cry . . .

“I’m sorry, I—I have to hang up now. I’ll let you know which day we’re arriving.”

“But I don’t even know where you are or—”

“Good-bye, Millicent.” She disconnects the call and immediately turns off the phone.

Her throat is still clogged with emotion, and her blood simmers with anger. She’s going to have to swallow it, along with her pride, between now and next week. Like it or not, she needs Millicent.

She should probably call and apologize for . . .

For what?

Her mother-in-law is the one who should be apologizing, for . . .

For being who she is? She can’t help that any more than I can help who I am.

Bella and Millicent are oil and water. But they’re stuck with each other, so . . .

Stuck and outa luck.

She picks up her phone to call back but thinks better of it. The call can wait until she’s cooled off—literally. The kitchen feels hot and close. She leaves the phone on the counter and steps out onto the backyard to get some fresh air.

It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.

She watches the rim of sun slide into the lake against what Sam would have called a “sushi sky.”

“What do you mean?” she’d asked the first time he referred to the sunset that way.

“All those streaks of red and pink and orange—it reminds me of the omakase platter at Oishii. You wait and wait for it, and it’s absolutely beautiful when it gets there. But it lasts only a few seconds before it disappears.”

“Are you talking about the sushi or the sunset?”

“With our appetites? Both.”

“Very poetic. I think you really did miss your calling, there, Keats.” Sam had passionately studied—and written—poetry in college.

“Nah. Poets are always broke,” he said with the hubris of someone who had chosen a financial career and expected to always afford lavish dinners at their favorite Japanese restaurant.

Life was good back then. Good for a long time.

I have to figure out a way to make it good again, for Max’s sake.

“Chance the Cat?” her son is calling, somewhere in the house. “Where are you, Chance the Cat?”

Staring at the sushi sky, Bella can feel her pulse slowing down and blessed tranquility seeping into her. She inhales deeply. The warm night air is scented with freshly mowed grass and mock orange blossoms. A firefly ballet begins to light the lawn. The lake is calm, barely lapping the tall grasses at the water’s edge, where a chorus of croaks and chirps grows louder by the second.

Then, suddenly, something splashes up from the still water just beyond the dock.

It hovers, flailing in the air for a long moment before disappearing into the lake again, and it looked like . . .

A hand?

She could have sworn it was a hand, reaching, grasping.

Heart pounding, she stares at the spot, certain she must have imagined it.

But no—she can see radiating ripples in the water.

Something was there.

“Mommy! I found Chance the Cat upstairs!” Max’s voice reaches her ears from a screened window above.

It couldn’t have been a hand, because she’d have seen someone out there, or it would have surfaced again by now, unless . . .

It’s Leona.

Is it her? Her ghost? Is she trying to tell me something?

Of course not. That’s crazy.

It must have been a fish jumping out of the water.

They do that, don’t they?

But do they hover in midair?

Enough. She’s had enough.

It’s been a long day, a crazy day, and . . .

And now I’m crazy?

No. She strides toward the lake, infuriated—with this place, mostly, but with herself, as well. She’s lost many things over the past year, but her sanity is not among them. She may not always be in control of her emotions, but she prides herself on her strength, and she’s certainly had a firm grip on reality . . .