Page 59 of The Stolen Queen

“What is this?” she asked, looking from the ring to her mother’s face and back to the ring.

“Brad proposed!” Joyce jumped up and down like a child and held out her arms. Annie slid from behind the counter and gave her a hug,jumping a little bit with her, as that was what Joyce seemed to want them to do. “We had dinner, and I was waiting for him to tell me the bad news—that his mother was sick and he had to fly home, or his job was sending him to Timbuktu—all the kinds of things I’ve heard before. But he just kept talking about how he’d never met anyone like me before. How much he loved New York and that he was going to quit his job and come live here. And then he got on one knee and the waiters brought over champagne. You should have seen it, it was glorious! Everyone clapped and congratulated us, and they even gave us a free dessert!”

“Wow.”

“Brad gets me like no one else does. We just understand each other, it’s hard to explain.”

“Wait, you said that he’s moving here?”

“That’s the best part. He’s flying to Nashville tomorrow, getting his things, and driving back. He’ll be here by the weekend.”

“What about his job?”

Joyce waved her ringed hand in the air. “He said he can get a job anywhere. He’s in sales, it’s no big deal.”

“Where will he live?”

Joyce turned to the sink and began running the water. “Oh, you know, wherever makes the most sense.” She put on a pair of plastic gloves and poured dish soap into the mixing bowl.

“What does that mean?” Annie didn’t mean to be firing off so many questions, but none of this sat right.

Joyce scrubbed the bowl with a sponge, a dreamy smile on her face. “Here, I figured. I mean, why not? He said he doesn’t have many things, so it’ll be an easy transition.”

Annie squeezed into the tight corner of the kitchen near the sink so her mother couldn’t avoid her eyes. “How are the three of us going to live here? The two of us barely fit as it is. Am I supposed to sleepon the couch? And what about his clothes? We don’t have enough closet space. I can’t believe you’ve done this without talking to me beforehand.”

Joyce tossed the sponge in the bowl and yanked off the gloves. “I knew you couldn’t be happy for me. Now that I finally have what I wanted, you’re jealous.”

“Jealous? Of the fact that some stranger is going to quit his job and move in with us? How much do you really know about him? He sounds like a freeloader if you ask me.” She glanced down at the ring. “An opal? Aren’t you worth more than that?”

“I love opals, and he knew it. That’s why he chose it.”

Annie had never heard her mother profess a love of opals. She was so desperate to have a husband that she was willing to twist herself into whatever version of herself he wanted her to be. “I can’t believe you’re okay with him moving in with us.”

“Well, he’s not, not really.”

“You just said he was. By next weekend, no less.”

“Not withus. With me.”

Annie was too shocked to speak at first. “What about me?”

Joyce sucked in her cheeks. “You’re a big girl now. You’ve got a job, you’re making a decent salary. I figured you’d want to be like other girls your age and find some roommates, share a place downtown. That’s what I did when I first started modeling, and it was great fun. You’ve been taking care of me for ages, now’s the time for you to stretch your wings. You’re free, finally. I thought you’d be excited.”

“Excited to be tossed out of my home with less than a week’s notice?”

“Sure.” She didn’t meet Annie’s eyes.

All the resentments that Annie had kept shoved down so that she didn’t set her mother off on one of her moods began to rumble to the surface. The way Joyce twisted around the reality of the past stung.“For years I’ve been making sure we had enough to eat, taking care of you through your moods and your men. I thought the plan was for your boyfriend to buy an apartment where we could all live together?”

“Things change. Please, Annie, I have to make this work.”

“Why? Why can’t we stay the way we are? He can move here, get his own place, and you can take it slow. Why trust a guy who’s willing to quit his job so fast? Makes me wonder if he had one in the first place.”

“I don’t know how you can say that since you’ve never even met him.”

All the signs pointed to a disastrous end. No doubt this Brad was a deadbeat who wanted a free place to stay in New York while he figured out his next move. Little did he know what he was getting into. The two of them would sink into an abyss that would leave Joyce helpless and vulnerable, and Annie wouldn’t be around to save her. “I’ve never met him because you refused to introduce me. Because you didn’t want him to know that you had a grown daughter.”

“A grown daughter who should be out of the house by now, living on her own.”

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