Sandra Steffen - Life Happens

It was as if Mya knew. Her expression still and serious, she took a backward step, and opened the door farther.

If she’d voiced the invitation, Elle wouldn’t have taken it. As it was, she glanced over her shoulder, torn. The night was dark, the street empty except for her rusty Mazda.

She’d come this far. Might as well see if any of it had been worth it. Drawing herself up, she went in.

Not about to allow her relief to show when she closed the door against the damp and the cold, she glanced around the small room, taking in the eclectic mix of furniture and color. There was a throw over the back of the sofa, the usual magazines and junk mail on the end tables, a pair of shoes on the floor next to an assortment of feather toys. “You have a cat?”

“They’re my fiancé’s.”

Elle snorted, then went and got caught looking at the open bag of potato chips and a plate of cheese. Her guard back up where it belonged, she glared at Mya, silently challenging her to make something of it.

“Would you like to sit down?”

Elle shook her head. And the woman, her birth mother—Elle welcomed back her anger—seemed to accept that.

“What’s your name?”

“Eleanor. If you want me to answer, call me Elle.”

“Hello, Elle. You’re shivering.”

“That’s my problem. You gave up all rights to my problems when you signed on the dotted line, didn’t you?”

Mya’s smile held a touch of sadness. Glancing away, Elle felt a wretchedness of mind she hadn’t planned to feel. Her stomach growled. Gritting her teeth, she would be damned if she would be embarrassed about being hungry.

“Could I get you something?”

“What? You wanna brew some sweetened tea and maybe make some toast for me?”

“And have you throw it in my face? Is that what you want to do?”

Elle hadn’t expected that. It was almost as if Mya knew her, or worse, understood her. Impossible.

“I didn’t come here to eat.”

It must have taken a lot to refrain from asking why the hell she did come then. Elle stifled the thread of respect trying to worm past her defenses. Mya Donahue hadn’t earned any respect. She was nothing to Elle, or almost nothing.

As nonchalantly as possible, Elle glanced out the window toward the street where her car sat, undisturbed. “I have to go.” She could feel Mya watching her, could sense the questions she wanted to ask. “What?” Elle asked, and dammit, she couldn’t keep her lip from curling snidely.

Mya shook her head. “Do what you have to do, but you’re welcome to come back.”

Elle took flight before she did something embarrassing, like sink to the sofa and rest her head for a minute, or worse, blurt out the reason she was here. She ran to her car and unlocked it. Mya didn’t follow her or call to her. But she stood in the open door in the cold damp wind. The sight burned the backs of Elle’s eyes.

Nobody said this would be easy, but the fact that it was this hard still ticked her off. The anger was fuel, and she used it to get the hell out of there. She drove carefully, though, for it wasn’t anger that had brought her to Maine. She was pretty sure Mya had picked up on that fact. Pulling into a parking space in the cheapest motel she’d found, Elle swallowed hard. When she was certain it was safe, she leaned over the backseat, unfastened the safety belt, and took the best thing she’d ever done into her arms. Ten-month-old Kaylie sighed in her sleep, comfortable and secure.

Her daughter’s warmth and weight girded Elle’s resolve and renewed her courage to do what she had to do. It was possible that all the courage in the world wouldn’t be enough.

“Geez, Mya, long time no see.”

Mya gasped at Claire’s terminology. She didn’t remember the drive to her friend’s loft on the waterfront, but Claire had been waiting for her, so she must have called ahead. Vaguely, Mya recalled pulling on the clothes she’d worn all day. Even Claire might have been put off if Mya had shown up in her bathrobe.

Claire said no more until Mya came to a stop at the huge windows overlooking island-studded Casco Bay. “What’s happened?”

Mya wasn’t certain how to answer. She wasn’t certain of anything. Had she come here to confide in Claire? Or did she need to see the lights dotting the ocean, the tanker on the horizon and the scattering of islands between here and there?

“Mya?”

She answered without turning. “I had a visitor after everyone else left tonight.”

“Who?”

Again, Mya didn’t know how to reply. Finally, she said, “My daughter.”

Claire’s silence finally drew her around. Poor Claire. She’d been awakened from a deep sleep. Still groggy, she blinked owlishly. “Your daughter?”

“I had a baby, Claire.”

“So that’s your secret. I always suspected you had one. Perhaps you should start at the beginning.”

She started in the middle, but she reached the beginning quickly, ending with Elle’s surprise visit tonight. “Nobody here knows about my past. Except my mother. And now you.”

Normally Claire wore contacts, but after being awakened tonight, she’d donned a pair of glasses. A few years ago, Suzette had laser surgery to correct her vision, but not Claire. It wasn’t because she hated hospitals, like Mya. Claire wasn’t taking any chances with complications. Claire O’Brien was one of those people who looked at four ounces of liquid in an eight-ounce glass and saw the potential water stain on the table.

“Have you told Jeffrey?”

Jeffrey? Obviously Claire wasn’t the only one who was dazed. “No.”

“Are you worried about how he’ll feel and what he’ll say?”

How could she be worried when she hadn’t given it any thought?

“Do you care what he thinks, Mya?”

Mya went from listless to ticked in under three seconds. Perhaps that had been Claire’s intention. “What do you think?”

“I think that if you’re going to marry him, you should tell him.”

That if brought Mya up short.

“What’s she like?” Claire asked, sinking into a nearby chair.

“She looks like me at that age, well, except for the piercings and tattoos.”

“Sounds like half my students. How old is she?”

“She’s nineteen today.” Mya watched Claire’s gaze go to her wild new hairstyle.

“What did she say?” There was nothing syrupy about Claire’s voice. Steady and level, it invited trust. It always had.

Mya shrugged as she rose, inexplicably drawn to the window again. Or perhaps not so inexplicably. Unlike many of the islands in Casco Bay, Keepers Island was too far away to be visible from the mainland from this vantage point. It was out there as surely as she was standing here.

She hadn’t set foot on the island in years, and yet she could picture it so clearly in her mind, the little harbor where the islanders docked their sailboats and skiffs and trawlers, the ice-cream shop and summerhouses near the beach, and the larger, weathered houses of the year-round residents farther inland, the square, brick school, and the sandy cove where she’d first made love.

Staring out across the bay, goose bumps rose on her arms. She had the strangest feeling someone was looking back at her. It was impossible, not to mention irrational. She got the hell away from that window just the same.

“Her name is Elle,” Mya said, clasping her hands tightly together. “Short for Eleanor.” It occurred to her that she didn’t know the girl’s last name.

“She didn’t tell you why she came or what she wanted?”

Mya scrubbed a hand over her face.

Claire said, “If you want me to stop playing twenty questions, just say the word. We can sit here quietly all night if you want.”

And Mya was glad she’d come here tonight. She’d needed a dose of Claire’s drollery and calm acceptance. “She stood in my living room a total of two minutes.” And every second was permanently etched on her mind. “I don’t think it’s a matter of her wanting something. More than likely, it’s something she needs.”