Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
He wanted a vodka rocks.
He didn’t share that.
“I’m good. Where’s your mom?”
“In her studio. She told me to tell you to go on up when you get here.”
“Right,” he murmured, turning to head out, but some papers sitting on the island had him stopping. “What are these?” he asked, touching his fingers to the papers that had photos of clay tennis courts on them.
Cadence glanced over her shoulder at the papers.
“Mom’s getting quotes on what it would cost to put in some tennis courts,” she said offhandedly, like her words didn’t rock Tom’s world. Cadence gave him her full attention, which included a radiant smile. “If she has one put in, we can play right here. And Clay can come out too.”
“Yes, sweetheart,” he replied.
She kept beaming at him before she went back to the espresso machine.
Tom headed up to Mika’s studio.
He found her curled into a rocking chair, knees to her chest, staring at the long workbench that took up one side of the sunny, colorful space.
“You okay?” he asked instead of offering a greeting.
Mika didn’t curl into herself. She lounged. She sprawled. She strutted.
This felt…off.
“I’m fine, Tommy,” she mumbled. “Kiss?”
He went to her, bent deep, and they kissed deeper—wet and warm and familiar, and Tom suddenly felt a lot better before he pulled away.
“Sure you’re okay?” he pressed.
“Yeah, I’m okay. Nora and I finally talked. She, too, says the whole thing with Jamie is just friends.”
“You don’t believe her?”
She shook her head. “It isn’t that. It’s just that I don’t want her to get hurt.”
Tom could understand that, but knowing Jamie, he knew it would never happen.
“Or the other way around,” she continued, and then teased, “It might surprise you to know Nora can be a viper.”
He chuckled. “That wasn’t lost on me. But she likes Jamie. Men and women can be just friends, honey.”
“Hmm,” she said, and he read from that not that she didn’t believe him, just that she didn’t believe it pertained to what they were discussing. Regarding him closely, she tipped her head to the side. “Are you okay?” Her brows drew down. “You were delayed. Are the kids good after having brunch with Imogen and Duncan?”
“They left a while ago. I got a call about an hour ago that they were about an hour and a half out, which means Matt and Sasha will be here in five minutes, considering how Matt drives.”
Finally, her lips tipped up.
“But yes. They report things are ‘lovey-dovey’ with Gen and Bowie, so it seems that’s all good.”
She nodded while murmuring, “Awesome.”
He moved to the other rocking chair that sat angled across a long, low table that, considering the notebooks and papers and pens and other bits and pieces scattered across the top of it could only be described as a desk.
He sat and said, “The reason I was delayed was that Andrew Winston called me.”
She came directly out of her curl, putting her bare feet to the floor and twisting to him.
“Say that again,” she demanded.
He did, and added more, including what Winston said, and the calls to Jamie and from Rod.
“He just mentioned Miranda,” she noted.
Tom nodded.
“But there were four women he attacked,” she went on, and added, “That we know.”
“I don’t know why he knows Miranda is talking, I didn’t ask. I didn’t want the call to go on as long as it did. As far as I’m concerned, Jamie’s letter will be the end of my interaction with Andrew Winston.”
“It’s going to get ugly from here, isn’t it?” she asked quietly.
“Just as long as most of that ugly is aimed at the people who earned it, it doesn’t matter.”
“That isn’t how this normally works, honey,” she reminded him.
Tom didn’t have anything to say to that, because she was woefully correct.
“Can I show you something?” she asked.
He nodded.
She reached a hand to him as she pushed out of her rocker. He took it, and she pulled him out of his chair.
She then led him to the worktable.
He saw the bones of what it was immediately. He wasn’t sure what she intended the end result to be. But he saw the poems. The short pieces. The pictures of wildflowers, cacti, desert rock and dirt, all of them beautiful, all of them seeming desolate, lonely, fragile.
Tragic.
And then there were other pictures.
Of Mika.
And Rollo.
And the two of them together.
Tom wandered the table, seeing the beauty, but feeling the pain.
“At first,” she said softly, “the idea was…I just wanted her to know. She’ll be leaving me soon, and before she does, before she goes out into the big, wide world, before she finds herself, I wanted her to know, truly and completely know her roots. Who made her. What she was. How much I loved him. How much he would have loved her. How much he and I loved each other. I also wanted to let him go, give him to her. It grew from there. To something I wanted everyone to see. I wanted everyone to see how much we loved each other. How much Cadence lost. Make him live again in people’s minds. And maybe give people who experienced the same as we did a place to feel their own pain reflected to them. So they’d know they weren’t alone.”