“A challenge, then,” I say. “I’m a challenge.”

“Maybe,” he says, still husky. “The challenge of my life.”

I laugh. “You’re teasing me now.”

He doesn’t laugh.

We stay silent for a while, so silent I can almost hear his heart beating through the phone. His slow breathing. “Good night, Saint.”

“Malcolm,” he quietly corrects.

“Malcolm.”

He chuckles then, at last. “Good night, Rachel. Think of me.”

Oh fuck. I groan.

What does he want from me? What do I want from HIM?

I need to talk to someone who won’t remind me what a mess I’ve made of things.

24

MOTHERS KNOW BEST

I need to see my mother. First, because I need to see that she’s looking a nice healthy color, not gaining or not losing weight because of unstable blood sugar. Second, because I know that she will have something wise to tell me, something that will help me see that maybe there’s a positive to take out of this freaking mess I’ve gotten myself into. I ask the girls to come over with me. I need girl time, which usually makes me feel wonderful. Tea, carbs, talking about Wynn’s aromatherapy shop and Emmett, Gina’s anecdotes about the department store, my mom telling me she’s stolen some time to paint in the room that used to be mine, and topics for my column.

My mother looks perfectly stable. She swears to me that her insulin’s working like clockwork and she’s had no recent blood sugar spikes, no episodes of hypoglycemia.

She’s enjoying the girls’ updates with a big, wide smile and eyes that are, by the second, getting bigger and wider than that.

“So she’s now going to take him down,” Wynn finishes filling my mom in.

My mother looks at me in surprise, then laughs. “Oh, but those young boys, they’re just being boys. They’re just being themselves—they’re certainly not evil. Malcolm Saint has been some sort of bachelor hero since he was born to that devil of a dad!”

“I didn’t say he was evil,” I quickly say, prickling in defense. “This story . . . it’s a job, it’s like pulling the curtain away from something, or revealing something new about a topic people are crazy about. I am certainly not going to write that he’s evil!” I’m getting defensive, so I scowl. “I’m not a mean person, Mother, I’m just trying to do my job.”

“So what will you say? That he’s a womanizer? These girls maybe want to be taken advantage of. I know I did. Your father—”

“Stop!”

Her eyes widen at my outburst.

“I need to write this exposé, and do you know why? Because if I don’t, I’ll get fired, and I don’t know how I’ll get by. And even if I don’t get fired, Edge is at the edge of collapse—and dozens of people are going to end up without jobs. And this, Mother, this is my opportunity to get you a house—a house of your own so you can paint for the rest of your days and maybe have me support you. So I will write this exposé because I’m a professional, and then Edge will get a new edge and my job will stabilize or even catapult me to another level, and then I’m going to buy you a big-ass car and a big-shit house with the money that rolls in, and Saint will be on his yacht with a dozen lovers and he won’t even give a shit.” My voice breaks and my eyes start watering, and Gina and Wynn, who’d been busy flipping through my mother’s magazines, suddenly look up and lower them.

My mother’s face softens. “I don’t want a house, Rachel,” she says, slowly setting down the tea box she’d been pulling out of a cabinet.

A stray tear comes to the corner of my eye, and I dab at it. “Well, you’re getting one. You deserve one, Momma.”

“Rachel, did you miss having a father so much? Did it hurt you so much?” She comes over and sits by my side, and reaches out to take my hand in her warm, soft one.

“It didn’t make a dent. I had you,” I assure her, blinking because I’ve never, ever had an episode like this.

“So why do you need to do something that is clearly not sitting too well with you?” she continues in that understanding way of hers.

Another tear, in my other eye, escapes. I free my hand from my mother’s and wipe it, aware of Wynn and Gina being so quiet, everyone being so quiet except me, breathing fast as I try not to cry harder than these measly little sniffles. “Well, isn’t that what life is about?” I ask her. “Making hard choices? Isn’t that what you choosing to stop painting so you could get a job was about? It was a choice that broke your heart but you had to do it because there was no other choice. Not really. Was there?”

“This young man, how does he feel about you?”

“He’s not in love with me, Mother. He’s not my dad. It wasn’t love at first sight, it wasn’t two soul mates connecting. He doesn’t want to be with me like Father did with you. He didn’t see me and think, ‘That’s my soul mate, that’s the woman I want to spend the rest of my life with, no matter how short’!”

I can’t go on. My throat clams up and my chest hurts. “I’m a challenge to him,” I add in a little voice. “I’m just this challenge to him. He’s not a man to feel love for a woman, he’s not made like that. He and I . . .” Something in my chest keeps tightening, like a noose, and my eyes are on fire. “We wouldn’t last even a season. And just like my dad, one second, poof, he’ll be gone, and it’ll be just me and you. Me and you, Mom. Like always.”

I don’t think I can bear to hear a reply, any reply, whether it’s to soothe, to reassure, even to agree, which might hurt even worse, and because I’m being stared at by the three of them as if I just grew a thousand worms out of my head—because I’m evil and that’s what happens to evil bitches like me—I push to my feet and head down the hall to my old room and close the door, breathing as I sit there on a stool before my mother’s unfinished canvas, my eyes leaking tears. I don’t even know why I’m crying. It shouldn’t have been this hard. I never expected it to be this hard. But my friends and my mother are starting to think I’m making a mistake.

I groan and lie down on the floor where my bed used to be, staring up above. I stared at this ceiling when I was just a little girl who wanted a dad, who had dreams, who wanted to make a difference, who wanted to write because writing made something . . . it made something out of nothing.