chapter 29

Julia should have known that her mother would nag her for the details of everything that

had happened in Cambria. And who could blame her, really? If Julia had borne the

an illegitimate child of some California billionaire, and then that child had grown up and

gone out there to meet the family he'd never known, she'd sure as hell want to get the

blow-by-blow dish on how that had gone.

Still, Julia wasn't up for talking to her mother right now. She felt so emotionally raw

after her experience on the West Coast that she didn't feel ready to rehash it with

Isabelle. And part of her worried that her mother would immediately sense that Julia had

fallen for a Delaney. After all, who better to recognize the signs than someone who'd

been through it herself?

Isabelle had always been able to read Julia's emotions on her face. If Julia talked to

her now, she'd be too exposed. She wanted to keep this heartache safe, where her mother

couldn't poke at it and reopen the wound.

On her first full day back in Bozeman, Julia ignored three phone calls from her

mother and answered four texts with the minimal amount of information she could get

away with. Yes, she was home. Yes, things had gone fine. No, she didn't know if Drew

had returned home from Cambria yet. No, she couldn't talk; she had too much work to

do.

That last part was a line of crap. While it was accurate that Julia had work she should

have been doing to prepare for the hotel job that was coming up, she wasn't doing it. She

was mostly wallowing in her heartbreak. She stayed in her pajamas until noon and ate a

pint of Ben & Jerry's for breakfast, and that helped somewhat. She listened to Colin's

voice mail message no fewer than ten times, and that didn't help at all.

She managed to put Isabelle off for a couple of days, which was a better result than

Julia had expected. When her mother showed up on her doorstep on a gloomy

Wednesday afternoon, Julia was past the pajamas and ice cream phase and had moved on

into a mostly manageable sadness.

Apparently, she didn't have a lock on sadness; when she opened her front door and

found Isabelle standing there with pink cheeks from the cold and the slushy remains of

snow on her boots, Julia could clearly see that Isabelle had been feeling some of it

herself. The older woman's face was lined with worry, and her eyes were rimmed with

red, as though she'd been crying.

"Mom." All at once, Julia started to feel guilty about the way she'd brushed her

mother aside when she'd gotten home from California. Julia hadn't wanted to deal with

her mother's neuroses, but she'd forgotten that all of the events involving Drew and the

Delaneys had been difficult for Isabelle, too.

She stepped aside to let Isabelle into the overheated house. Isabelle came in and

removed the snowy boots and her other winter gear. She put the boots on a mat by the

door and hung her other things on the coat rack. Only then, when she was standing in her

thick socks in Julia's living room, did she give Julia the reproachful look that she

probably deserved.

"I'm sorry I didn't return your calls," Julia said lamely. "It's just, I had a lot to do

when I got home, and …"

"You were avoiding me," Isabelle stated, her mouth tensed in a way that emphasized

the fine lines in her skin as they feathered away from her mouth.

"Well …" Julia's shoulders fell. "Yeah. Maybe."

"But why?"

"It's just … It's all been a lot to deal with, that's all."

Her mother glared at her. "Well, Julia, it has been for me, too." Then Isabelle's face

softened. "Honey? Are you okay?"

Was it that obvious that she wasn't? She knew her mother could read her, but she

hadn't expected her to manage it quite so fast.

"Come on into the kitchen," Julia said. "I'll make coffee." This was likely to be a

long conversation, and Julia didn't think she could manage it without caffeine.

"Well … why did Liam think that any of this was Drew's fault? Drew was as

blindsided by all of this as anyone."

Isabelle was seated at Julia's kitchen table with a mug of coffee in her hands. She

looked both stunned and pained by Julia's recounting of the events that had taken place in

Cambria—a recounting that had strategically omitted her own involvement with Colin

Delaney.

"I don't think he really blamed Drew," Julia said. "I think Liam is grieving over his

uncle, and he didn't know how else to express it. He's not exactly the kind of guy who's

comfortable talking about his feelings."

"Neither was Redmond," Isabelle said. She seemed like she was somewhere far

away, wrapped up in her memories. A faint smile played on her lips. "He was such a

man's man. Stoic. Strong. I know it must have hurt him when we stopped seeing each

other, but he never said it." Her eyes became shiny, and she blinked a few times.

"Mom?" Julia's voice was soft. "Why did you do it? Why did you …"

"Why did I cheat on your father?" Isabelle filled in the words Julia couldn't seem to

say.

"Well, yeah."

Isabelle was quiet for a while, thinking about how to respond. Maybe she didn't

know the answer herself, or maybe she was just figuring out how best to frame it so Julia

could understand.

Finally, she looked at Julia with tired, sad eyes.

"Redmond Delaney was the love of my life."

The simple truth of it took Julia's breath away.

"He wasn't like anyone I'd ever met," Isabelle went on. "It was like we'd known

each other forever. I knew what we were doing to Andrew was wrong, but … Oh, honey.

I couldn't have done anything else."

Listening to her mother, Julia realized that she hadn't been considering Isabelle's

point of view before now—not really. She'd seen her mother's actions as scandalous,

careless, a betrayal. And while she wasn't ready to accept the idea that Isabelle had been

anything but wrong to cheat on her husband, Julia began to wonder if the situation might

be more multidimensional than she'd thought.

"You loved him," Julia said, absorbing what her mother had told her. "And

Redmond … Do you think he loved you?"

"I know he did. He would have married me. He wanted me to leave Andrew."

Julia thought of the life she would have had as part of the Delaney family—insanely

wealthy, but separated from her father. She couldn't imagine what that would have been

like—living without her father's reassuring, steadfast presence every day.

"Why didn't you?" Julia's voice broke at the thought. "If you loved him, then

why?"

"Andrew was my husband," she said. "I made a vow. And he was a good man. I

wasn't in love with your father, not like I should have been. But I did care for him, and he

didn't deserve what I did. He didn't deserve to be left." Isabelle looked up from the

tabletop and focused on Julia. "And then there was you. You were so little, and you

adored your daddy so much. I couldn't do that to you."

Julia wanted to ask her mother so many questions: How had she and Redmond met?

What was he like? How did she keep the affair a secret from Julia's father? How had she

felt when she'd heard about Redmond's death?

She couldn't ask the questions, though, because she could barely absorb what she'd

been told. The information made Julia reevaluate everything she'd thought she'd known

about her childhood and her family. Julia sat mutely at the table, staring at her mug of

coffee that had now grown cold.

"How is Drew?" Isabelle asked when the silence became too much for either of

them.As far as Julia was concerned, this change of topic didn't help matters.

"I don't know," she said. "I don't even know if he's still in Cambria. He … We had

a fight. It didn't end well."

"What kind of fight? About what?" Isabelle's voice began to rise.

Julia considered lying to her mother—she could make up some story, something that

wouldn't result in a difficult conversation she didn't want to have. But Isabelle could read

her too easily. And anyway, there had already been too many lies.

"About me. And Colin Delaney." She couldn't meet her mother's gaze, and so she

got up from the table and made a big production of rinsing her coffee mug in the sink.

"What about you and Colin Delaney?" Isabelle asked. She'd taken the insistent,

the somewhat accusing tone of a mother who knows her child has misbehaved in some

highly predictable and yet infuriating way.

Julia set the mug down on the countertop and turned to face her mother. "I went out

with him. We … were dating." Julia wondered if her mother would understand that

dating was code for getting naked and having mind-blowing sex. Given Isabelle's own

history with a Delaney man, she probably did.

"You're dating one of the Delaneys," Isabelle repeated, as though the information

were so improbable she thought she had to carefully confirm it.

"Was. I was dating him. But that's over now. So over." Just saying the words caused

a new pain to jab Julia's heart.

"What happened? Why did it end?"

Julia considered how much she should say. On one hand, telling her mother about

her love life was awkward. They'd never had the kind of relationship some mothers and

daughters had; she'd never come to her mother with her hopes and fears regarding the

men in her life. But she needed to talk to someone about it, and Isabelle was here.

"Liam went nuts when he saw us kissing, and he attacked Colin. And then Drew

found out about it, and that was almost as bad. He didn't hit anybody, but I think he

wanted to." The memory of that caused tears to spring to her eyes.

Isabelle leaned back in her chair and regarded Julia with a frown. "I still don't see

what that has to do with you and Colin."

"Of course it has to do with me and Colin! Of course, it does! If we'd kept seeing

each other, it would have torn both of our families apart!"

Isabelle narrowed her eyes at Julia. "That's a little dramatic, honey. It's not like you

two are Romeo and Juliet."

"But Drew said I betrayed him!" She remembered the look on Drew's face, the hurt

she saw there and pushed the image away.

"Honey. Just because he felt like you betrayed him doesn't mean you actually did.

Who you date is your business. Drew's feelings about it are his own issue." Rarely had

she heard her mother make quite this much sense. It was unsettling.

"But …"

"But nothing. Since when do you let your little brother tell you what to do, Julia?"

"Well, I don't, but …"

"Listen, honey. What I did to your brother was wrong. I shouldn't have kept that

kind of secret from him. I thought I was doing the right thing at the time, but I didn't

consider what it would do to him if he found out the truth on his own someday. It hurt

him, and I'm deeply sorry for that."

Julia started to say something, but Isabelle interrupted her.

"But he's going to have to find a way to get past it, to move forward." She shook her

head. "He's got so much anger inside him, and it's just not good for him. It's not good for

anybody. All of that anger is hurting him, but you can't let it hurt you, too."

Julia understood what her mother was saying, and she saw the wisdom in it. But at

the same time, it would always be her instinct to protect her little brother, to shield him

from anything she thought might be a threat to him. She'd done it when they were kids,

and she was still doing it now. How could she just … stop?

"I see what you're saying, Mom. I really do. But you didn't see his face. You

weren't there." If Isabelle had seen Drew's eyes when he'd found out about her and Colin

—if she'd seen the hurt in them, the judgment—then surely she'd feel differently.

"I think I'm familiar with your brother's moods," Isabelle says wryly. "I think I ought

to be after I raised him."

Julia came back to the table and sat in the chair across from Isabelle. She slumped

down in defeat. "It's not just that. It's not just drawing."

"Well, what else, then?" Isabelle was looking at her with such love and concern, it

made Julia feel sorry for the distance that had formed between them over the past few

years. She'd convinced herself that she didn't need her mother, but in fact, she did.

"It's just … Colin is obscenely rich. And … and he's so …" She gestured vaguely

with her hands to indicate the entire, profound scope of male beauty. "Have you seen

him?"

Isabelle chuckled lightly. "Honey, I've seen him."

"Well, then you know what I'm trying to say!"

"I'm afraid I don't." Isabelle crossed her arms on the tabletop and peered at Julia

with interest.

"What would a man like that want with me?" She gestured at herself, indicating with

a sweep of her arm her old hoodie, her faded jeans, her messy ponytail. "He wears

Ferragamo shoes, for God's sake. He's the tenth most eligible bachelor in business!"

"He's … Honey, he's what?"

"According to Fortune magazine," Julia clarified. "Liam is fifteenth. I'm thinking

that must have been awkward around the dinner table."

"Sweetheart … Are you saying you think you're not good enough for him? Because

that's just—"

"No! Yes. Maybe. Or … maybe it's just that we're from entirely different worlds,

you know? He's from a world where people dress up in designer clothes and eat meals

with way too many utensils. Well, the rest of his family doesn't do those things, but he

does. He went to Harvard Law!"

It just all felt so hopeless.

"You stopped seeing a good-looking man you really like because he went to Harvard

Law? I've got to tell you, honey, I wouldn't have considered that a deal-breaker."

Julia looked at her mother and saw a hint of a smile on her face.

"You're making fun of me."

"Just a little, sweetie." Isabelle reached across the table and took Julia's hand. "Do

you like him?"

Julia felt tears welling up in her eyes. "I like him so much it's making me irrational."

There was that whisper of a smile again. "Well, Julia, I can't really argue with that."

This was what it had come to Julia's mother, who wasn't exactly known these days

for making wise decisions when it came to love, was ridiculing her for her relationship

choices. That had to be some kind of rock bottom.

As though reading her mind, Isabelle said, "Look. I know I don't have all that much

credibility on this subject right now. But I've learned a few things the hard way.

Redmond was my soul mate. And I let him go."

Julia gaped at her. "Are you saying you wish you'd left Dad?"

Isabelle squeezed her hand. "I'm not saying that. I'm just saying … I never stopped

loving Redmond. And it never stopped hurting."