Back on Blossom Street (Blossom Street #4)(26)

That wasn’t the case now. The dark circles under Margaret’s eyes betrayed her inability to sleep. She’d lost weight, too, and her pants hung loose around her waist.

After hanging up their coats, I hugged Margaret. “I’m so glad you could make it.”

Matt glanced in Margaret’s direction, and I had the feeling that at the last minute, she’d wanted to cancel. I don’t know how he managed to change her mind, but I was relieved he had.

“The chicken’s on the grill,” Brad said, shaking hands with Matt and hugging Margaret. I loved him all the more for the warm way he welcomed my family. “I’m not sure what Lydia’s been making, but she’s been in the kitchen most of the afternoon.”

“You’ll see,” I teased and we shared a smile because he knew very well what I was making.

“How about a beer?” Brad offered Matt and the two men disappeared onto the back patio while I got a bottle of chardonnay from the refrigerator for Margaret and me. Cody was with a friend for the day and wouldn’t be back until later. After investigating who was at the door, Chase, Cody’s golden retriever, had returned to his bed in Cody’s room.

“Is there anything I can do?” Margaret asked.

“You could set the table.” I had the plates, napkins, silverware and glasses ready. All Margaret had to do was carry them to the table and arrange each place setting.

“Would you mind if I called home first?”

“Of course not.”

She excused herself and hurried into the other room. I could hear her talking to Julia, her tone anxious as she checked on her daughter’s safety. Were the doors locked? she asked. The windows? Had she turned the oven off? Julia must’ve hated having her mother constantly standing guard over her, and yet I’m not sure I wouldn’t have done exactly the same thing.

Margaret returned to the kitchen, where I was busy transferring everything to serving dishes and setting them in the middle of the table. “How’s Mom?” she asked as she carefully folded the napkins. This was her attempt at avoiding questions about Julia.

Margaret had only seen our mother a couple of times since the attack. “She seems fine,” I told her.

My sister gazed sightlessly into the living room. “I miss her.”

Initially I didn’t understand what she meant. How could Margaret miss our mother when all she had to do was drive over to the assisted living complex? They’d always been close. Even now, they talked at least once a day. After we’d first moved Mom, Margaret stopped by the complex as often as twice daily.

“It’s almost like we don’t have a mother anymore, isn’t it?” Margaret said sadly.

A sense of loss came over me. The role reversal had occurred so gradually, I was hardly aware of it while it was happening. All at once, Margaret and I were taking care of Mom. We had, in effect, become the parents, weighing decisions, dealing with financial matters and driving her to doctor’s appointments. This situation had begun in earnest a year ago, when we discovered Mom was severely diabetic and needed to be on insulin. Lately, she’d slipped mentally. The medication she was on no longer seemed to be working.

“Mom will always be our mother.”

“I know that,” Margaret said and cast me an irritated glance. “It’s just that I can’t talk to her now.”

“Of course you can,” I challenged. Mom thrived on routinely hearing from us.

“Not about this.”

This, of course, was the attack on Julia. I forgave Margaret for her hot-tempered response when I understood what she meant.

“I miss my mother,” Margaret repeated.

I agreed. I missed Mom, too. Missed those special times we’d spent talking about anything and everything. I’d grown to rely on her insights about the store and my customers. But when I was a teenager, Mom had been so deathly afraid of my cancer that she’d forced my father to oversee all medical matters. My father was the one who’d chauffeured me to countless appointments and argued with doctors on my behalf. He’d sat by my bedside before and after my surgeries and whispered encouragement when the pain was more than I could bear. He was there when I suffered the debilitating effects of chemotherapy and buoyed my spirits every way he could. We grew exceptionally close, and in that, we’d excluded Margaret and our mother. True, Mom did her best for me, but my father was my anchor.

“I’d like to tell her about Julia,” Margaret continued. “But…I can’t.”

What my sister wanted, of course, was our mother back the way she used to be. She wanted Mom to promise her that everything would be all right, that this nightmare would soon be over and life would return to normal. She sought assurance that the attack wouldn’t have a lasting effect on her daughter. She wanted Mom to tell her that Julia would be able to sleep through the night again and smile and laugh as though she hadn’t a care in the world. Margaret wanted peace, the kind of peace only a mother can give a hurting child, the peace she longed to offer her own daughter.

“Chicken’s done,” Brad said, coming in from the patio. It’d started to rain, which was no real surprise, since it’d been raining off and on all weekend. The chicken br**sts smelled tangy and enticing. Brad had marinated them in a mixture of soy sauce, Italian salad dressing and herbs—a blend he could probably never duplicate again.