The Good Mum

Had she? And what was brave about washing his hair? “He didn’t want a haircut,” she explained. “I did what I could.”

“Well, you were a hit. I overheard what he said to Ilana. You impressed him, Ashley. He’ll probably come back to you as a regular client now.”

Ashley froze. She hadn’t even considered that could happen. That was...that was...

“How did you get this job, anyway?” Sandie asked her curiously. “Because Ilana is...particular. Turnover is high at Perceptions, but the stylists who stay—well, we have a good reputation. The pay is great, and the customers are loyal.”

Ashley sat reeling, still absorbing the information. “I won an industry award last March,” she said, “for styling the models’ hair at the Museum of Art’s Pompeii exhibition party.”

“That’s great! But how would a hair stylist get involved with the Pompeii exhibition party?” Sandie asked.

“Through my younger sister.” Ashley smiled to herself. “She got me involved with the museum a few years ago. She has a big interest in archaeology.” Lisbeth, besides being a doctor, was also a history nerd. A big, lovable history nerd. “I learned to style hair for the Roman period using pictures my sister showed me. The women back then wore really intricate braids and headpieces. It was interesting. Some of the museum members commissioned period costumes for the party, and I designed the hairpieces for their outfits.”

“I could see where Ilana would be impressed with you.”

“I hope so,” Ashley murmured.

“Well...” Sandie glanced back toward her station. “Will I see you tomorrow?”

“Of course.”

Feeling uneasy again, Ashley clutched her purse and headed out the door to meet Brandon. As she passed the receptionist station, Kylie nodded at her. “Goodbye, Ashley. Are you coming back tomorrow?”

So uneasy.

* * *

OUTSIDE, THE SUN had lowered behind the buildings enough that it wasn’t as hot as it had been when Ashley had been outside with Aidan earlier.

She walked past the park where she’d sat with him, but she couldn’t think of that right now. Feeling shaky again, she paused to take a breath. She’d been walking so fast, so lost in thought, that she almost bumped into a woman coming toward her on the sidewalk. The woman—with a little dog in tow, pulling on his leash—frowned at Ashley as she passed.

Ashley moved to the other side of the sidewalk. Put her hand over her stomach and took a deeper breath.

Almost home. She was at the building next to theirs, which housed a liquor store on the street level. A “package store,” as they were known in New England terms, or at least, as people in her old neighborhood called them. “Packies” for short.

Her gait slowed. She couldn’t help glancing in the window at the rows of bottles. Wine, her particular weakness, would be at the back of the store. She was no connoisseur, hadn’t cared about vintages or grapes, she’d just sipped now and then to keep the edge off and to help her nerves. Shaky nerves, like she had now after her unsettling day of work. The vague sense of shame that she’d done something wrong, but wasn’t quite sure what. The anxiety that she was an inadequate person and didn’t quite know how to fix it, other than to do what she had to, which was to take care of her child. The child she’d been blessed with, a most precious person. The one person who always loved her back, and she couldn’t screw him up, not like she and her sister had been screwed up by their mom and her alcohol-and-men problems.

Ashley touched the window, her hand trembling. A part of her, so raw and visceral, desperately wanted to go inside that package store. To hear the tinkling of the bell over the door. The cool feel of the bottle in her hand. The crinkling of the brown paper bag that covered it. And then, at home in her kitchen, to pop open the cork and pour the white wine into the large plastic cups that she and Brandon had used back when she’d last tasted a drink.

He’d been eight years old. Four years ago. She’d tossed those cups the day she’d come home from rehab. In her mind, she’d done the worst thing ever—she’d left her eight-year-old son for thirty days in the care of her shy younger sister who’d felt uncomfortable with children—and yet she’d also done the best thing, which had been to address her problems. Ashley had taken the steps she’d needed to take. She was a recovering alcoholic.

But why did her hand still shake? Why did she yearn to go inside?

Closing her eyes, she took a breath. And another. And another. All baby steps. All leading her away from temptation.

The only unwise part of her new life—moving into an apartment near a liquor store. But it couldn’t be helped. She’d had to make a choice between Brandon’s need to be closer to his new school and her own need to be farther away from her old addiction.

Brandon’s needs had won. Brandon’s needs would always win. As they must.

* * *

AIDAN ATE HIS meal silently, alone. His grandmother had been on her telephone for the past half hour.

First her stockbroker, then her lawyer. Then the general manager of her professional baseball team, the New England Captains. If he was lucky, Aidan thought with amusement, maybe he’d get the trifecta plus one, a ringside seat to her conversation with the head of the board at Wellness Hospital.

Finally, she hung up.

“Eighty-five years old,” he said to the legendary Vivian Sharpe. “Don’t you think you should relax and enjoy yourself for once?”

She gave him a dark look. “You know better than to say that to me.”

He set down his fork on his luncheon plate. They were at a fancy seafood restaurant that just felt odd to him, after nearly a year out of the country and living in the situation he’d been in.

He sighed. Might as well come out and say what he’d been thinking. Delicacy had never been a part of his and Gram’s relationship. “Dad mentioned in his last email that he and Mom were worried about you. He asked me to talk to you and give my opinion about the state of your, ah, mental faculties.”

And then Aidan softened the blow with the wry, comical smile that he and Gram alone liked to share. She snorted at him. He knew it was good-natured on her part, though the message surely had to sting.

She waved her hand. “I’m restructuring my estate, and William and Jane haven’t been happy about that fact. Pay no attention to their insinuations. I don’t.”

Aidan nodded. William, Aidan’s dad, was a world-renowned heart surgeon. He and Jane—Aidan’s mother, also a cardiologist—had enough money that they didn’t ever need to worry about finances again. Even so, finances were the types of conversation they loved to concern themselves with.

Heart surgeons with no hearts, Aidan thought, and not for the first time. He laughed out loud. It was darkly comical, and since he knew there was nothing he could change about it, dark humor with Gram was a fine way to cope.

“You laugh now,” Gram said, a spark in her eyes, “but William spoke to me about you, as well.”

“He isn’t worried about my finances, is he?”

“No.” She waved her hand again. But this time she met his gaze seriously. “I’m worried about you, too, Aidan, but I’m worried about your well-being.” She leaned forward and peered more closely at him. “You’ve been through a terrible situation. I wish you had come home last October when it happened. I don’t know why you stayed.”

No more humor, he thought sadly.

“How are you, Aidan? Honestly?”

“I’m fine, Gram,” he insisted.

She shook her head. “I may have been on my phone just now, but I noticed you’ve been ignoring your text messages. That isn’t fine.”

His grandmother didn’t miss a trick. Surely she’d also caught a glimpse of who the text messages were from—Fleur’s parents. Right now, he just wasn’t in a good place to speak with them. Eventually he would be. But not yet.

He gazed out the window at the view overlooking the blue Atlantic. Sailboats bobbed in the bay. In the distance was a faint smudge of land—one of the islands in the outer harbor.

“Aidan?”

He glanced at the water glass he’d been idly rubbing his finger around. “Yes, Gram?”

“It is nice to have you back. And to see you looking civilized again, even if your hair isn’t quite short enough yet.” She reached out and touched his hair.

He smiled faintly at her. “You asked them to do that for me. It wasn’t my idea.”