Good for You: A Novel (29)

“My mom? Where?” said Aly, confused. Granted, Cindy’s hair was a shade of orange not found in nature, but how could Wyatt see the driveway from the patio? Besides, why would she be here when she didn’t know Aly was in town?

“Yeah.” Wyatt grimaced. “She’s inside our house.”

Aly was too busy jumping up to notice he’d used the word our.





FIFTEEN


“Allllllleggggra! I’ve been looking for you!”

Cindy stood at the counter, watching Aly as she reluctantly let herself through the French doors.

“Looks like you found me,” she said, unable to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. “What are you doing inside the house, Mom? And how did you know I was here?”

“Is that your fancy editor look?” asked Cindy, ignoring her questions.

“What do you mean?” said Aly, glancing down at herself. She wore a threadbare T-shirt dress—hardly the kind of thing she’d wear into the office.

“You’re wasting away.”

This, coming from a woman who was all of ninety pounds soaking wet. Food had never been a priority for Cindy—not for herself, nor for her children, and beneath her oversized T-shirt and sweatpants, she appeared withered to the point of frailty. In fact, now that Aly thought about it, it was strange that her mother even noticed her figure; she was usually too worried about herself to pay much attention to Aly. “I’m good,” she said.

“Well, you don’t look it,” said Cindy, who made it sound like Aly’s appearance had personally offended her.

You’re not looking so hot yourself, she thought, though years of biting her tongue made it all but impossible to voice her true feelings to her mother. Cindy did seem to be sober. But age and alcohol had not been kind, and the deep grooves in her leathered skin gave her away as someone who’d smoked nearly her entire life. “Did you let yourself in?” asked Aly, looking through the window for Wyatt. Where had he disappeared to?

“The door was open. Not the safest,” said Cindy, glancing around the house. Her deep gray irises were the same color Luke’s had been; to her dismay, Aly resembled her father, who had dark hair and eyes, and skin that shifted from practically translucent in the winter to golden in the warmer months.

“No, it’s not safe,” agreed Aly, making a mental note to have another word with Wyatt.

“I do have a key, though,” added Cindy.

Forget Wyatt—Aly needed a locksmith. “And why is that?”

“Oh, your brother wanted me to have it,” said Cindy, but Aly had spent too many years with her mother to mistake her darting eyes for anything other than a sign she was lying.

“What’s the real reason, Mom?” she insisted.

Cindy sighed and walked into the living room. “Billy and I were having trouble one day, and Luke wasn’t home, so he told me where to find the key out on the patio, so I could let myself in. I forgot to give it back.”

“I’m happy to put it back for you,” said Aly, extending her hand.

“Why are you here now, Allegra?” said Cindy, who made no motion to approach Aly, let alone offer her the key. “I thought you had no interest in Luke’s place. But from the looks of it, you’ve been here a while,” she said, staring pointedly at the pile of laundry Wyatt had left on an armchair.

Which was when Aly realized her mother had no idea that Luke had left the house to Wyatt, too—and not to Cindy. There was no way this wouldn’t crush her mother—and maybe even send her into a booze-filled spiral. Moreover, she would want an explanation, and Aly couldn’t provide her with that.

“Why are you here now?” she asked, hoping to distract Cindy from the fact that every item of clean clothing she was looking at belonged to a man.

“I told you that me and Billy are on the outs. I’ve been staying with my friend Jean over in Fennville and decided to go for a drive to clear my head. Somehow ended up over here.” She shrugged. “When I saw a car in the driveway, I thought I’d investigate in case something sketchy was going on. But never did I imagine that my own daughter wouldn’t tell me she was in town.”

Now it was Aly’s turn to lie. “I was going to.”

“Well, you didn’t,” said Cindy, jutting her chin out. Then her expression shifted. “But since I’m here, how about letting me stay in one of those guest rooms? I like the one that looks out at the water. Or I can stay in Luke’s room, unless you’re already set up there. I don’t want to wear out my welcome at Jean’s, and you don’t need this whole big house to yourself.”

What? No. No. There was no scenario in which Aly wanted to be under the same roof as her mother, and certainly not now. In one breath, Cindy would be poking at Aly, trying to get some sort of reaction out of her so she could inform her that despite her highfalutin degree and snooty job, she was still just like the rest of the Jacksons. In her next breath, she’d be pretending like their past was picture frame–worthy. Dan had never hit Cindy—he prided himself on not being “that kind of man”—but he’d always behaved as though he’d made a mistake in marrying her. Yet Cindy had the audacity to act like he’d been father of the year before he went on his “walkabout,” as she referred to his disappearance after the night Luke told him he’d literally kill him if he ever laid a finger on Aly again. Aly knew one person couldn’t be responsible for another’s addiction, but Cindy hadn’t become a blackout drinker until Dan took off. It was almost as though her new reality was so intolerable that she decided to opt out of it entirely.