to worry about getting pregnant at your age, but you don’t want to catch some nasty disease.”
Lucille suspected Olivia was trying to shock her mother. The young woman had certainly dated her share of men in the five months she’d been in town. Maybe she’d slept with a few of them. Though, come to think of it, she hadn’t gone out with anyone since D. J. had arrived in Eureka. “I’ll remember that,” she said drily.
“Where’s Lucas?” Olivia asked.
“Up in his room, reading, I think. Where have you been?” Lucille couldn’t help noticing that Olivia’s truck—D. J.’s truck—hadn’t been parked in its usual place outside the Dirty Sally when she passed on her way home.
“Out.”
Just like that, the wall was up—the one Olivia had always been good at putting between herself and her mother. Lucille knew better than to fight her. She turned back to the mirror and tugged at a stubborn curl over her left eye. “There’s frozen lasagna if you want to fix that for your and Lucas’s dinner. Don’t wait up for me. I might be late.” The smugness she felt in saying these last words was probably immature and unbecoming, but it felt good nonetheless. How many times over the years had Olivia said those words, leaving her mother home to worry and wonder?
Not that Lucille expected her daughter to worry, or even wonder. She doubted Olivia cared much about her mother’s social life.
“If you need anything, call me.”
The words, the ones she herself had spoken countless times—almost always to Olivia’s back as she walked out the door—startled her. She studied her daughter’s reflection in the mirror for any sign of sarcasm but saw none. She swiveled the stool around again and stood. “I’ll be fine,” she said. “Gerald’s a nice man.”
“They all seem nice at first.”
She recognized the cynicism, too—one part her own despair after her marriage to Olivia’s father, Mitch, crashed down around her and one part the result of Olivia’s own tumultuous relationships with the men in her life. “When you’re young, it can feel that way,” she said. “Getting older makes you a little more forgiving.”
Olivia straightened, arms uncrossed. “Forgiveness is overrated.”
She left the doorway, her footsteps making a faint, shuffling sound as she retreated down the hallway to the stairs. If Lucille had thought Olivia would listen, she’d have told her forgiveness hurt less than holding a grudge. But she knew sometimes holding a grudge was all that held you up. After Mitch left, the anger was all that kept her going sometimes—the desire to prove to him how much she didn’t need him. It had been years before she realized he hadn’t been watching, that he’d stopped caring long before she did.
Whatever D. J. had done, he’d hurt Olivia badly. Lucille liked the serious young man, and Lucas practically worshiped him, though Olivia could scarcely stand to look at him. But when she did, Lucille recognized the longing there. Her love hadn’t yet burned out. Lucille remembered the words D. J. had said when they’d met—the night Lucas was trapped in the French Mistress Mine. How he’d loved Olivia the first time he saw her.
It was a foolish, romantic notion—that love could bloom from just one glance, like a spark setting a forest fire. But it was an idea Lucille wanted to believe in, for Olivia’s sake and for her own. She was tired of being cynical and scoffing. After so many years alone, she wanted to believe in the possibility of love.
Olivia watched the red convertible pull away, her mom in the passenger seat, laughing at something the silver-haired man behind the wheel had said. Honestly, a convertible! Could this Gerald character be any more of a cliché?
“Where’s Grandma going?” Lucas joined her at the window, watching the retreating car. He’d shot up over the summer, until he was almost as tall as she was. Soon he’d overtake and pass her. His father had been tall. Still was, she guessed. She hadn’t laid eyes on him in eleven years and didn’t care to, but if he’d died, someone would probably have notified her.
“She’s going on a date,” she said.
“A date?” Lucas’s eyes widened behind the round glasses.
She turned and headed for the kitchen. Lucas followed. “Who’s she going on a date with?”
“A guy named Gerald Pershing. He’s visiting in town.”
“Does he know she’s the mayor?”
“I imagine he does.”
“It seems funny to think of Grandma dating.”
“Because she’s the mayor?”
“Because she’s Grandma.” He tilted his head to the side, thinking. He reminded her of an owl, eyes magnified behind the glasses, tufts of blond hair sticking up like feathers. Except he looked less babyish these days, more evidence of the man who’d one day be breaking through. She wanted to shake him and tell him to stop. She’d barely gotten the hang of being a mother to a little boy; she hadn’t the slightest idea how to cope with someone older.
“I guess Grandma is kind of pretty,” he said.
Lucille wasn’t classically pretty; she was too tall and raw-boned for that. But she had a striking quality and an elegance she’d grown into. The face that had looked back at Olivia in the dressing table mirror this evening had indeed been beautiful.
“Yes, I guess she is,” Olivia said. She took the lasagna from the freezer and flipped the package over to read the directions.
“We should eat the fish I caught,” Lucas said.
“Your grandmother can cook the fish tomorrow. Tonight we’re having lasagna.”
“D. J. told me how to cook it. He said to stuff it with lemon and butter and wrap it in foil and bake it.”
When they’d been together, D. J. had done most of the cooking. He was much better at it than she was. “That sounds good,” she said. “I’ll let your grandmother know.”
She set the oven for 400 degrees and slid the block of frozen pasta from the package.
“D. J. is going to teach me how to tie flies. You use real bird feathers and stuff.”
D. J. again. Lucas would talk about nothing else if she didn’t change the subject. “Janelle and Danielle are hiring me to paint a mural on the back wall of the Last Dollar,” she said.
“That’s cool.” Lucas helped himself to a banana from the basket on the counter. She started to tell him he’d spoil his supper but bit back the words. One banana wasn’t going to dull his appetite; he ate everything in sight these days.
“You’re not surprised they asked me instead of some professional artist?” she asked.
“You’re as good as any professional.”
He thought that? Really? She couldn’t hold back a grin. “I’ll need you to help me decide what to draw. I don’t know much about the history of Eureka.”
“You should put in the Native Americans who first settled here—the Uncompahgre. And the gold miners.” He made a face. “ ’Course, Miss Wynock is going to want her family in there somewhere.”
“Miss Wynock?” Olivia couldn’t place the name. Not a patron of the Dirty Sally, then.
“The librarian. Her family supposedly founded the town. It was all in the play I was supposed to be in at the Hard Rock Days festival.”
Of course—that Miss Wynock. How could Olivia forget? The woman had been a tyrant about that damn play, and she’d practically busted a blood vessel when Lucas had failed to show up to play his part in the Founders’ Day Pageant. He hadn’t made the play because he’d been trapped in the French Mistress Mine up on Mount Garnet. Olivia had been too worried about his absence to pay much attention to the play.
Right