Anything for Her(68)
Until this moment, she hadn’t understood how right he was. That was what she’d always done. And she’d done it again last night—let her mother make a decision that should have been hers alone.
Except...maybe not. It was her mother a New York mob family had promised to kill, not Allie. That was something she couldn’t forget.
Nolan’s expression softened, as much as his angular face would allow. “He hurt you.”
She lifted one shoulder in an almost-apologetic shrug. “Not that much. By then I was so mad at him I didn’t care as much as I probably should have what he thought of me.” Her mouth twisted. “My family was a mess. It’s been peaceful, having only Mom and me.”
“I guess you and I have that in common, don’t we?” His eyes were warm again, not calculating at all. “We’ve run away from family.”
“Yes, except in my case I trailed along behind my mother. You had the courage to do it yourself.”
Me, I’ve never done anything but trail along behind my mother, not since they yanked me away from my life. And that, Allie supposed, summed it all up: dance was her life, and once she lost it, she’d never regained any sense of place or identity or meaning.
Except for quilting. Her head turned, and she took in the shop. The rainbow of colors, the glossy wood floors and creamy walls and the beautiful quilts hung, some for display, some for sale. The board that listed classes, the row of sewing machines in back, the long table and her quilt frame.
Yes, she did have a purpose and identity now. I am a quilt maker. But the finding of that identity had been slow. She hadn’t even fully understood until now how important it had been for her to find something that fulfilled her.
“Not courage,” Nolan denied. “I was tired of family pressure and tension, that’s all.”
“Do you have pictures of them?”
He looked surprised. “You mean in my wallet? Maybe old ones. Not my mother and father.” He shifted on his seat to pull out his wallet. After a minute of thumbing through it, he removed a tattered photo. “Man, that’s from a long time ago. Prom,” he added unnecessarily, and kept digging through a miscellany of worn receipts, business cards and who knew what.
Allie took the photo, feeling a funny cramp in her stomach at the thought that maybe he was showing her a picture of himself and his date at prom. But no. The boy in the picture definitely wasn’t Nolan. Looking closely at the girl, Allie thought she could see a resemblance to Nolan. Her bone structure was too strong for her to be called pretty. Yes, the cheekbones did have something in common with his. She had strawberry-blond hair, though, and a scattering of freckles across her nose. She was tall and skinny. Her expression suggested she wasn’t comfortable in the typical too-feminine prom dress and awkward heels, with her pale red hair up in some complicated do decorated with flowers.
“Anna?” Allie assumed.
He’d found another photo. He handed it over and took the one from her hand. He laughed softly, looking at his sister. “Yeah. She grumbled all afternoon getting ready. I kept saying, ‘You don’t have to go,’ and she’d snap, ‘Yes, I do and you know why.’”
“Why?”
“There was this bitch at school who headed the popular clique and loved nothing better than belittling everyone else. I think it got so she was Anna’s personal nemesis. She predicted—loudly—that no one would ask Anna to prom. By that time Anna was asserting her calling as an artist partly by wearing sacky jeans or even overalls stained by clay or glazes all the time. Clunky boots. Flannel shirts.” Nolan smiled, remembering.
“My little sister. Mouthy, abrasive, didn’t take any shit from anyone. Now, she wouldn’t let some stuck-up airhead get to her, but she was a teenager, after all. She had some guys who were buddies, and bullied one of them into taking her to prom. I think they stayed all of a couple of hours, breathed a sigh of relief and went home.” He set down the photo. “Anna’s...well, not a beauty, but closer now. The men like her, anyhow. She’s always got one around.”
Lifting the other picture, Allie recognized it as a senior photo. Nolan’s brother appeared terribly young and yet didn’t have that unfinished look either his sister or Nolan did. He was conventionally handsome, his brown hair lying smooth, his smile for the camera confident and unshadowed.
“He really doesn’t look like you,” she said, handing it back. “Or Anna, does he?”