Of Literature and Lattes, page 9
Janet’s happy sigh brought her back to the present. “I’m becoming one. Again. Can I show you around the room?”
Alyssa couldn’t move a muscle.
Her mom took it as a yes and eagerly pointed to one wall. “This is where it began in February. I call her The Woman.” She described all the words she’d penned in different fonts, inks, textures, and sizes into a large word cloud of a woman moving forward toward the viewer. And in the center of a large piece of linen paper, Janet had created something extraordinary. Tall and strong, the mass of words didn’t cover the woman, they created her. They defined and propelled her.
Alyssa stepped close to untangle them. Confidence, good, eager hands, food, confers, buys, earnings, plants, vigorously, strong, profitable, open arms, no fear, scarlet, fine, purple, dignity, wisdom, household, blessed, noble, praise.
“The words come from Proverbs 31. Maddie, Mrs. Carter, gave it to me in a letter.”
Alyssa stepped back and took in the room again. “Four months? How is that possible?” She heard the note of sarcasm in her voice and bit her lip against it.
Janet, by her wondrous expression, didn’t hear it. “Some nights, early on, it felt like I lived and breathed only this. There was a clarity, creativity, and a hyper-focus I can’t explain. Look here. This is a painting I did of you. Do you remember the photo we took of you on the swings in Milan? The street artist painted your face? And this one . . .”
She moved through the room pointing here, there, low, high—Alyssa barely kept up with the color, the light, the commentary, the perspective. She found that the most challenging. The perspective. She didn’t recognize her own mom.
Janet must have felt her shift of emotion, because she stopped and stared at her. She reached out as if to touch Alyssa’s arm, then pulled back before making contact. “I’m sorry. I’ve thought about this moment for a long time, and I’m messing it up, not unlike Tuesday. I would’ve talked to you that night, but your light was off when I got home and then you were gone all day yesterday and . . . I didn’t want to wake you this morning.”
Alyssa kept her eyes on the walls. Looking at her mom was too hard—like when she tried as a kid to look at the sun and not blink. More had changed than she anticipated, and in that moment, when again the ground gave way beneath her, she struggled in her desperation to find stability.
“Nothing’s the same, is it?” The words came out in a whisper and felt more for herself than for her mom.
“I’m not sure what you mean.” Janet stepped toward her again.
“I mean you, Dad, home, not home, me . . . this.” Alyssa waved her hand around the room. “I thought I could start again. That, in coming home, maybe I could catch my breath, catch up.” She twisted her wrist, fingers now pointing toward Janet. “Where was this when we were growing up, Mom? You don’t just go from zero to this in four months.” She stopped. The back of her throat stung with tears.
“I think I’d been storing it up for years. It kind of exploded out of me. And that was wrong, but I didn’t know—I promise I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t know what?”
“That art, expressing myself in this way, was such an integral part of me. I got it wrong. I listened to the wrong voices and was punishing myself, or your father . . . I don’t even know anymore, but I ended up punishing you and Chase too. We moved here so fast, then you were born and I wanted to make everything perfect for you. I wanted to be perfect. The perfect wife. Mother. Friend. Neighbor. PTA volunteer. There wasn’t any room, at least I didn’t see any, for this, for me. I thought I had to leave it behind, that it was selfish and—”
A chime broke across the moment. Janet looked past her into the dark office. At the click of a switch, it filled with light.
“Janet?”
“In here,” Janet called before dropping her voice to Alyssa. “Madeline. Maddie Carter was her aunt and left her the shop. She and Claire own it together now.”
Alyssa turned, expecting to meet a slightly younger Mrs. Carter, someone near her mom’s age. Instead she found a woman exactly her own age—and almost her height. Auburn hair arced up at her forehead, giving her face a heart-shaped appearance, before it curled past her shoulders. Madeline’s brown eyes widened upon seeing her and lit with delight.
“Wow. You’re Alyssa.” She laughed. “Chris was right.” Madeline looked between Alyssa and Janet. “Come on, you two. Don’t tell me you can’t see it? You’re twins—well, Janet’s got more wrinkles and something concerning waddling just below her chin.” Madeline winked at Alyssa.
“Thank you.” Janet smirked.
“Don’t see what?” Another woman stepped around and in front of Madeline. This one was closer to Janet’s age, with darker brown bobbed hair. “Alyssa . . . Oh, it’s so good to meet you. Are you here long?” The woman threw a questioning glance to Janet and thrust out her hand. “I’m Claire Durand.”
“Claire, as I said, owns the shop with Madeline,” Janet added.
“How long are you here?” Madeline pressed past Claire and brought them both spilling into the small room.
“I . . . I have to go.” Alyssa swiveled around them and backed through the office toward the storefront. “I really do. It’s nice to meet you both, but I didn’t realize how late it was.” She glanced back to her mom, unable to hold her gaze. “I’m meeting Lexi for coffee.”
With that, she bolted out the storefront and onto the sidewalk.
Chapter 13
“Hello? Earth to Lys?” Alyssa’s best friend waved a hand inches from her face. “I’ve been calling your name since across the street.”
Alyssa grabbed her into a hug.
“Good to see you too,” Lexi laughed.
Alyssa almost mentioned the studio, the women, the shop, then realized Lexi already knew. Lexi lived in Winsome, and had stayed since college. None of this was a surprise to her—only Alyssa had been left in the dark. She offered an “I’m so glad to see you” instead and looped her arm through her friend’s.
Lexi spun them toward Andante. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about coming home until yesterday. Seriously, you go radio silent for six months and then you’re here . . . Why are you here?” Without waiting for an answer, she cinched Alyssa tighter at their interlaced arms and whispered, “Wait till we’re seated. I want to hear everything.”
As they walked the few steps to the coffee shop, Alyssa took in Winsome—and saw it as if for the first time. What was once poky and provincial now bustled with activity. The town square was crisscrossed with people. New, and more, parking spaces were delineated on the diagonal rather than running along the street parallel. New plaques emblazoned the doors between shops. By the signs, many of the above-store apartments had been converted into offices—an architect, a lawyer, a dentist . . . A medical spa spanned the space above the coffee shop and Olive and Eve Designs. Even Winsome Jewelers, its protruding sign visible down a side street, sported a new logo and graphics as swanky as Andante’s.
Lexi held open the coffee shop door as Alyssa focused on the fountain. Despite everything said against it for decades, she liked that the town had installed that fancy heater all those years ago and that the water now flowed all year round. There was something hopeful about that symbolism and its plaque declaring Winsome’s “never-ending flow of love and support for those who have gone before us.”
“Do you love living here?” she asked Lexi, who directed her toward the counter.
“Of course, you know that.”
“Not too small?”
“Things are only as small as you make them. Besides, it’s home.”
Lexi turned to order, leaving Alyssa to chew on her comment. She thought back to Palo Alto, Silicon Valley, and how she believed that area and that time to be the antithesis of Winsome and all that occurred here. It was a happening place, moving at Mach speed with the flow of new ideas, innovation, and cutting-edge thinking—politics, progress, and a propulsion that defied gravity. Yet some days she’d never felt so small, isolated, and alone. The fact that she knew the moment her dad hugged her that no one had come nearly so close in at least six months stunned and dismayed her. She couldn’t deny that even before XGC imploded, the loneliness was creeping in. And once XGC did implode, the emptiness grew more pervasive and consuming. She’d lived her last month prepping for interviews, eating the cheapest food she could buy, and only talking to her lawyer when necessary—which was hardly a legitimate human connection when he charged her $250 per hour for their chats.
Seated, Lexi issued a one-word command. “Spill.”
Alyssa sighed and tried to unravel her last six months, and even the two and a half years before that. They took on a new dimension with recent revelations and events. But before she could synthesize her thoughts and create a cohesive trail through the scandal and failed interviews, Lexi shot for the heart of the matter.
“Why wouldn’t you call me back? No text. Facebook. Instagram. You disappeared . . . I’m your best friend.”
Alyssa snorted, then covered her nose. “Please, with my life, I closed my accounts.”
Lexi’s face told her that wasn’t good enough. She reached across the table and tapped her friend’s hand.
“I’m sorry. I was embarrassed. I still am . . . a little ashamed too.”
“Ashamed? It’s not your fault. You couldn’t have known.”
Alyssa slumped in her chair. “Yes. I could’ve. I could have asked more questions. I could have taken more time. I rushed. I raced ahead like I always do.” She waved at Lexi. “You say it all the time. But I wanted it to work, Lex; I needed it all to be real. Nothing here was real, and Tag made XGC feel like it was the most real thing that could ever be.”
“Life here was real, Lys, and it was yours. It just had more dimension than you thought, and you got rolled. Heck, I felt betrayed, and I’m not a member of your family.”
“I love that you call that ‘dimension.’”
Lexi raised a brow, and Alyssa felt herself sink deeper into her chair and concede the point. To Lexi, who’d been through far worse and survived, it was “dimension”—an aspect of life to come to terms with, accept as far as you can, and forgive the pain as you reach the other side. And Alyssa couldn’t fault her. It wasn’t an untried Pollyanna approach; Lexi had lived it—and through trials and circumstances that would have done much more than “roll” Alyssa.
Alyssa nodded a You win and jumped to her next thought. “You were grafted into the family years ago . . . Have you ever heard of ‘confirmation bias’?”
Lexi laughed and shook her head. “I’m sure you’ll tell me.”
“We work against it running numbers, trying not to let what we want to be real, what would fit our vision of things, affect our interpretation of them—but we do. We let what we want to confirm determine what we choose to see. I needed XGC to be legit, and good, and even successful, because I needed to be those things. I needed to strike out on my own and succeed. But by someone else’s standards. As always, I defined myself by another’s metrics.”
She said “another,” but she knew Lexi understood. There was only ever one “someone.” Her mom.
“And once again, you’ve been in your head too long. Everybody wants that, Alyssa. We want our parents to be proud of us, our peers to respect us, our friends to love us. So stop doing that too . . . You take something normal and make it sound like you’re the first human to get it wrong.”
Alyssa smiled. Unwittingly she had struck upon another long-time debate. This one began fourteen years ago, starting when Alyssa tried her first beer at seventeen, then got in massive trouble with her mom and grounded for three months. Oddly, her mom hadn’t even been upset about the beer. Do you know how it would look if you’d gotten caught? Do you know what that would say about me? About our family? Alyssa, terrified, barely sipped a drink again until her twenty-first birthday. She also endured four years of Lexi chirping at her to “let yourself off the hook,” “chill,” and “gain a tiny bit of perspective.”
Alyssa shook away the past. “Fine. But nothing about what XGC did was normal, and I was right in the center of it. I can’t let myself off that easy.”
Lexi sat forward. “Try, because it’s over.”
“Not for me.”
Something in her voice cued Lexi, because she sat straight.
“I could still be in trouble. My lawyer says the FBI has gone division by division, and they’ve interviewed everyone in mine but me. They’ve made arrests; he won’t say how many or who, but it’s crickets where I’m concerned. They haven’t reached out at all.”
“That could be a good thing.”
“Or they could be building a case.”
Alyssa felt her breath hitch and knew she needed to change the subject. After “Trust no one,” her lawyer’s next piece of advice was “Never worry until I tell you to.” It was good advice; dwelling on the unknown, the past, and all the questions she couldn’t answer would get her nowhere. But it was hard too because—as Lexi said—she was often too deep in her own head.
Alyssa took in her friend, whose eyes now mirrored the panic she felt in her own, and wondered why she’d gone silent for six months. How had she forgotten how much they’d been through? Her withdrawal had diminished their friendship. Alyssa reached out and squeezed Lexi’s hand. And from Lexi’s smile, she knew nothing more needed to be said.
She also noted that Lexi’s hair was dark again, back to her natural auburn. The last time she saw her friend, when she’d come for a Napa wine-tasting weekend the year before, she’d just added blonde highlights. They were now gone, and the dark suited her complexion better. “You look fantastic, by the way.”
“I wish I could say the same for you.” Lexi delivered the line deadpan, then leaned back, pulling her hand from Alyssa’s, and crossed her arms.
Alyssa recalled giving the same reply regarding the highlights. “Touché.” She grinned. “Remind me again why we’re friends?”
This time it was Lexi who reached across the table and seized her friend’s hand. “It’s going to work out. Come crash with us. Our new place is in those townhomes they just built near the lake, and I just decorated the spare bedroom. You’ll love it.”
“Yes . . . I’m sure your husband would love me lurking around your place every morning.”
“He would,” she protested.
“Liam’s fantastic, but I can’t. I’m broke, Lex.”
“We wouldn’t charge you rent.”
“You don’t understand. I’m broke to the point I can’t pay for groceries, gas, anything . . . My lawyer promised his firm wouldn’t charge interest on my outstanding fees because I’m running a debt there too. Do you see what I’m wearing? Remember this?” Alyssa grabbed a fistful of her bright cotton skirt, then continued before Lexi could comment. “My checking account has $124 in it, my credit cards are maxed out, my savings are gone, and my car died yesterday. In fact, I gotta get going soon. My shift at Jasper’s Garage begins at noon.”
“You’re kidding.” At Alyssa’s expression, she shook her head. “You’re not kidding.”
“I’ve got to pay for the repairs somehow. I need a car, Lex.”
“But your parents—”
Alyssa pulled her hand away. “No way. Don’t even go there.”
“I’m sorry . . . I didn’t know, about any of it.”
“Because I couldn’t tell you,” Alyssa whispered as the full-pressured throb that always preceded tears filled her head. It was an all-too-familiar feeling, and she gave it her standard answer: she widened her eyes and set her jaw. As usual, the pressure dissipated.
Lexi leaned back in her chair. “Okay then . . . I’ve got a job for you too. And I’ll pay you.”
“I can wait tables? Jasper’s closes at six; I can shower and be to you by six thirty. I’ll work every night you’ll let me.” Alyssa reached for her bag and shook a couple Tums from her bottle.
Lexi raised a brow but didn’t comment. She’d commented enough on those during that same Napa visit.
“I need you for something else, if that’s okay, but if you’re desperate we can talk tables later too. This’ll be more money, though . . .” She leaned forward again. “As of last month’s payment, Liam and I own 51 percent of Mirabella. The restaurant is killing it, Lys, and now we want to look at how the VC guys have run things. When they bought the place to flip, they set up their own PR, accounting, and suppliers, and while we’ve taken over the suppliers, they still manage the other stuff. But the spending has bothered me for a while. I don’t see any good coming from it. In fact, I think we could throw dollars out an open window and create more buzz. Liam and I are the ones with wheels on the ground, and honestly, those guys are all downtown and have no clue how things run out here . . . But now we own the controlling interest.”
“So now you’ve got a voice.”
Lexi grinned. “Isn’t that a lovely thing?”
“It is . . . And using your money better, growing faster, means you can buy up percentage points faster too.”
