Page 66 of Love You
Chapter Fifteen
Darcy awoke to voices in the kitchen. They were muffled but she could make them out just the same. The first one belonged to Nana, the second was the voice of doom, which made her smother her face in a pillow to drown out the sound. She practiced her breathing. In and out, in and out.
It was her day off so she could spend as long as she wanted in bed, just inhaling and exhaling. Except she had plans, ones that she sensed were about to be broken. She inched to the edge of the bed, felt for her phone, and checked her messages under the tent of her blanket, hoping that TJ wanted her to come in. Nope, she was screwed. Why couldn’t someone need her when she needed to be needed?
She lazed as long as she could, stretching her legs as far as they would go. Win barely fit on her full-size bed but she couldn’t even touch the footboard with her toes. Britney’s toes would’ve touched. Darcy had seen Win’s ex-fiancée only once but she’d been tall and slender.
Britney was Win’s usual MO, at least in the looks department. And why not? Beautiful people tended to gravitate toward other beautiful people, leaving the lesser mortals to settle for the leftovers. But just for once, Darcy hadn’t had to settle. And even though she and Win had been a onetime deal, she’d always have their liaison to remember and to give her a lift in desperate times. Like now.
She forced herself out of bed and dragged herself to the shower, taking extra long to wash her hair because . . . procrastination. Then she took a while to go through her closet and pick each article of clothing to wear with the same care as she would’ve planning her own funeral. This wasn’t procrastination, this was sheer survival. The occasion called for putting on heavy-duty Spanx and going monochromatic from head to toe. She even broke out her kitten heels and put on a full face of makeup.
Her mirror said she was as good as it gets and she strode down the staircase, trying to hold her head up high and not to die from her undergarments cutting off her oxygen flow.
“Mother!” She acted surprised to see Geneva sitting at the dining room table. “I didn’t know you were coming.”
Geneva gave her a swift examination and the fact that she didn’t utter one criticism should’ve been the tip-off that things were even worse than Max had let on. That’s when Geneva burst into tears, leaving Darcy at a loss of what to do. She realized she had absolutely no idea how to comfort her mother. The truth was after thirty-one years they were detached, almost like strangers.
“Max said he told you about the divorce,” she said, wiping her nose on one of Nana’s linen napkins. “Did he tell you he was leaving me for someone else?”
He hadn’t but in the back of Darcy’s mind she’d thought it was a possibility. A slight one, but one nonetheless. She hadn’t asked because frankly she hadn’t wanted to know. “No. I’m sorry, Mother.” “I’m sorry” seemed woefully insufficient but she didn’t know what to say and a part of her was angry that they were putting this at her door.
When she’d left Lewis, both her parents had been the opposite of supportive. Her mother had made it clear that Darcy would never do better and her father had treated the divorce like a childish phase.
“I can’t believe he’s doing this to me.” Geneva wailed. “He wants to sell the house, probably so he can buy something better for his slut. I worked my ass off to make that house . . . everything. It was the envy of all our friends.”
She sounded more upset about losing the house than she did about losing her husband, Darcy noted. And her “working my ass off” consisted of hiring people. But Darcy could understand her disappointment. Her life was being turned upside down. That part of it Darcy understood firsthand.
“You can start over, Mother, get a new house. And you can make it any way you want. I’m sure it will be as gorgeous as yours and Dad’s.” Darcy sat at the table across from Geneva and glanced at Nana, who seemed as uncomfortable as she was. Max was Nana’s son after all and Geneva was clearly here to claim them to her side.
Geneva stared back. “Get your head out of the clouds, Darcy. When your father’s through with me I’ll be lucky to afford a double-wide. If you don’t believe me, look around.” To punctuate her insult, she literally turned her nose up as she glanced around Nana’s cozy house. “Did you get your own place with your large divorce settlement from Lewis?”
Darcy hadn’t wanted anything from Lewis, only her freedom. They’d been married a mere two years; it’s not like he owed her anything, though it would’ve been nice to have been recognized for helping him grow his real estate firm. Her parents, on the other hand, had been married for more than three decades and her mother had helped Max build their mortgage company from the ground up.
“Nevada is a community property state, Mother. You’ll get your due.” She rarely spoke to Geneva with such bite but she’d be damned if she’d let her denigrate Nana’s house. More love abounded from the fifteen-hundred-square-foot cottage than all of Max and Geneva’s four-thousand-square-foot castle. Besides, Darcy lived here by choice.
“Are you really that naïve? Between his tramp and his accountant, I’ll be lucky to get a quarter of our financial worth.”
Darcy didn’t know how the “tramp” fit into this. She and Nana exchanged glances before Hilde got up to refill Geneva’s coffee and bring Darcy her own cup.
“Have you hired a lawyer?” Darcy asked, even though the obvious question felt like she was taking sides.
“Of course I have, though your father has already retained the best divorce attorney in Reno.”
Darcy assumed there was more than one good lawyer in Nevada but clearly her mother needed to vent. “I’m sure you’ll find a good one too.” And because Darcy couldn’t help giving her mother a taste of her own awful medicine she said, “If you’re that worried about it you should try to get Dad back. Clearly, he’s a wonderful catch.”
At that Geneva burst into a second round of tears, which made Darcy feel like an absolute bitch.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean that.”
“Yes, you did. You think I don’t know how much you resent me for Lewis. I only say the things I do because you’re my daughter and I love you. I want you to have a good life, Darcy. I want you to be happy and have what I had all those years, before your father left me.”
Geneva did not make a habit of telling Darcy that she loved her. In fact, Darcy couldn’t remember her ever saying it before and the words took her by surprise and made her lungs constrict. Perhaps all her mother’s sniping was never intended to be hateful. Maybe she really did have Darcy’s best interest at heart. But it was still sad. Sad that her mother equated having a good life with having lots of expensive things. Sad that a loveless marriage was better than no marriage at all. And sad that she knew so little about what made Darcy happy. It certainly hadn’t been Lewis.
She wanted to go to her mother, hold her, but she didn’t know how. They’d never been a touchy-feely family. The table between them may as well have been a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon.
“She’s not even beautiful,” Geneva said, this time blowing her nose into the napkin. When Darcy looked at her quizzically because she had no idea what her mother was talking about, Geneva said, “Your father’s receptionist, the one he dumped me for. She’s short, mousy, and chubby. Hardly what one expectsthe other womanto look like.”
Darcy was struck by the portrayal. It sounded vaguely familiar because it was all the things Geneva had accused her of being. Darcy the fat dish towel.
