Lizzy stopped chopping and turned to stare.
“What?” Rhanna pouted, all innocence. “I’m old, not dead.”
Lizzy opened her mouth, then closed it again, and resumed her chopping.
“So what’s the deal with her?” Rhanna asked, filching a bit of green pepper from the cutting board and popping it into her mouth. “Why’s she living here?”
“The deal,” Lizzy said dryly, “is that she was Althea’s friend. She was with her till the end.” She paused, looking up at Rhanna. “She’s like us.”
Rhanna’s brows lifted. “By like us, you mean . . .”
“Yes,” Lizzy answered pointedly. “I mean like us.”
“Wow.” The corners of Rhanna’s mouth turned down thoughtfully. “There’s something you don’t hear every day.” She reached for the glass of chardonnay on the counter, but Lizzy checked her, sliding the glass just out of reach. Rhanna sighed. “Is this how it’s going to be? You treating me like I’m some unwanted guest who just turned up on your doorstep?”
“Isn’t that what you are?”
“This is my home, Lizzy. I grew up here—just like you.”
Lizzy stared down at her glass, twirling the stem between her fingers. “You grew up nothing like me.”
“Lizzy . . .” Rhanna’s eyes were soft, pleading.
Lizzy sidestepped her. “Let’s not do this, okay?”
But Rhanna seemed determined to have her say. “What I did, when you were a baby, giving you to Althea—I know it seems horrible. But I also know I was right. I wasn’t . . . equipped. I was selfish and thoughtless, and so screwed-up. That’s why I did it, Lizzy. Not because I didn’t care—because I did. I was afraid . . .” She closed her eyes, her slender shoulders sagging. “I was afraid I’d hurt you.”
“Right,” Lizzy shot back before swallowing the last of her wine. “You certainly wouldn’t have wanted that.”
They were still glowering at each other when Andrew reappeared. Lizzy turned, eyeing him frostily. “You’re still here.”
“Evvie asked me to bring you this.” He handed her a trug of freshly picked lettuce. “She said she’d be in shortly to do the salad. Oh, and I’m supposed to tell you to set a fourth place for supper. She asked me to stay.”
Lizzy eyed the basket, then Andrew, wondering how she’d managed to lose complete control of the situation. “Terrific.”
“I carried your mother’s things up. I didn’t know which room she’d be in, so I left them at the top of the stairs.” He paused, leaning in, dropping his voice. “I need to talk to you.”
There were things she needed to say to him too, but now wasn’t the time. She jerked her chin toward the counter, littered with chopped vegetables. “I’m a little busy just now. It seems I’m giving a dinner party, and I need to go kill the fatted calf.”
Andrew let the prodigal-daughter reference pass. “After supper then. It’s important.”
An hour later, they were all seated around the kitchen table. Lizzy would have been happy to eat in silence, but Andrew seemed determined to draw Rhanna out.
“So I have to ask. What on earth possesses someone to hitchhike from California to New Hampshire?”
Rhanna flashed him a grin. “The same thing that motivates someone to hitchhike anywhere, I guess. Empty pockets. Or nearly empty. I had to sell my van to take care of some people I owed, which left me with exactly eighty-nine dollars, my guitar, and my thumb.”
Andrew looked at her in astonishment, and perhaps the tiniest bit of admiration. “You left California with less than a hundred dollars in your pocket?”
“I’ve always been resourceful.”
Lizzy rolled her eyes. “That’s one word for it.”
Andrew acknowledged the snipe with the barest of glances, then returned his attention to Rhanna. “What did you do in San Francisco? I remember you used to paint.”
“I did, but I had to give it up. Couldn’t afford the supplies. I sang in coffee shops, read cards, told fortunes. I didn’t make much, but it was enough to feed me most of the time, and I had friends who’d let me crash on their couch when things got really tight. It was your basic ‘Gypsies, Tramps & Thieves’ existence, but it suited me.”
Lizzy put down her wineglass with a snort. “And what about now? Does it suit you now?” She was glaring at Rhanna openly, disgusted by the entire performance, as if she were some fascinating bohemian simply marching to the beat of her own drum. Did she honestly believe anyone was going to buy that after the disasters she’d left in her wake?
Rhanna’s smile slipped. “I’ve learned to take life as it comes.”
“Better known as leaving your messes for other people to clean up.”
Andrew caught her eye, as if hoping to stave off the scene he knew was coming. Lizzy met his gaze without apology. After years of not knowing whether Rhanna was alive or dead, she’d been blindsided by her sudden return. She was entitled to a scene.
She pushed back her plate, swiveling her attention back to Rhanna. “Do us all a favor and skip the clever banter. You might have been too stoned to remember how things were—how you were—but my memory’s fine. Shoplifting from the drugstore. Passing out drunk at the Fourth of July parade. Picketing the VFW on Veterans Day. Every time I turned around, you were doing something to embarrass us.”
Rhanna met her gaze, shoulders hunched. “Lizzy, please—”
“Please what? Please don’t shame you like you shamed us?”
“I never meant—”
“Why don’t you tell us what you’re really after, Rhanna? Because we both know you weren’t homesick. You took off and never bothered to let anyone know you were alive. Now, you show up expecting me to roll out the welcome mat. Did you really think that’s how this would go?”
“Of course I didn’t. I know what you think of me—what everyone thinks of me.”
“Then why did you come?”
“I told you . . .”
“I know what you told me. Now I’m telling you—if you schlepped halfway across the country with your guitar on your back because you
