Rhanna looked as if she’d just been slapped. “That’s what you think? That I came here for money? You know me better than that.”
If Lizzy hadn’t been so furious, she might have laughed out loud. Know her? In what world would such a thing have ever been possible? When she was usually too drunk or high to remember her own name, let alone the name of her daughter?
Lizzy pushed her chair back and stood. “That’s where you’re wrong, Rhanna. I don’t know you at all. I’ve never known you. You made sure of that.”
TWENTY-TWO
Bloody hell.
Andrew stood at the edge of the orchard, his gut knotted like a fist. He had smelled the ash long before reaching the scene, had even imagined what he would find when he arrived, but nothing Evvie said had prepared him for what he was looking at: blackened trees, scorched ground, a heap of charred timber where the shed once stood.
Arson. Evvie had whispered the word out in the garden, explaining that the investigators had discovered a pair of kerosene torches among the rubble. The thought made his blood run cold. It could just as easily have been the house.
He’d touch base with Guy McCardle first thing in the morning. Randall Summers might not take his job seriously, but Guy was a straight arrow. If there was something to know, he’d know it.
He turned and headed east, the setting sun at his back as he walked the perimeter of the orchard, peering down each row as he went. Lizzy was here somewhere. He had known it instinctively when he left the house, ignoring Evvie’s suggestion that he let her have some time to herself. They needed to talk, now, and not just about the fire.
He found her ten minutes later, sitting cross-legged with her back against an old stump, head bent, eyes closed. Was she crying? Praying? Did she pray? He’d wondered a lot of things about her over the years, but never that.
His chest tightened as he approached her. He’d run through a dozen conversations in his head on the way here. Now, suddenly, he didn’t know what to say. She didn’t lift her head, but he could tell she knew he was there. “Lizzy.”
She looked up, fixing him with a withering stare. “What do you want?”
“I want to talk to you about this.” He waved an arm, indicating the scorched ground and blackened trees. “Evvie gave me the Reader’s Digest version while we were in the garden. I assumed you’d fill in the blanks at dinner, but you didn’t say a word.”
“Sorry, I was a little busy. Some guy decided to drop my mother on my doorstep without warning.”
Andrew sighed, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “What was I supposed to do, Lizzy? Let her keep walking? She would have gotten here eventually. You realize that, right?”
“That isn’t the point.”
“It is, actually. She’s not some drifter I just picked up. She’s your mother.”
“Stop saying that!”
“Okay. Okay. There’s some bad blood between you two. I get it. I also get that this isn’t really any of my business, but at the risk of stepping over the line, maybe it’s time to work through your issues. For Althea’s sake, if nothing else. She’d want the two of you to work things out.”
“How would you know?”
“Because we talked.”
Lizzy’s eyes narrowed. “About me?”
Andrew suppressed a wince. He hadn’t intended to mention his conversations with Althea. Especially the one they’d had about Lizzy’s tortured relationship with her mother. He’d known instinctively that she wouldn’t appreciate being discussed, even by her grandmother, but he’d opened the door now, and maybe it was time.
“Yes,” he said carefully. “Sometimes we talked about you. We talked about Rhanna once too. About what happened before she left, and the effect it had on you. She made a lot of messes, that’s for sure, but she did come back. That’s got to mean something. Maybe she wants another chance. And maybe deep down you want to give her one.”
Lizzy cut her eyes at him. “The only thing I want to give Rhanna is a ticket back to wherever she came from. Don’t look at me like that. You know what she’s like. You saw her that night in the fountain, making a spectacle of herself. That’s who you picked up and brought here.”
Andrew blew out a sigh. Yes, he’d seen her. Half the town had seen her. And the half that hadn’t seen her had certainly heard all about it. And about every other damn thing she’d ever done. But he’d also seen Lizzy’s face when Rhanna stepped out of his truck, that instant of recognition, of relief, before she’d retreated behind her outrage, and he couldn’t help wondering if all that anger was masking something deeper, something she wasn’t willing to acknowledge—pain. The kind people lived with when their hearts had been broken. Yes, there was history, and, no, he didn’t know all of it, but surely thumbing three thousand miles across the country—even for a self-professed gypsy—counted for something.
“Maybe she isn’t that woman anymore,” he said quietly. “Maybe she’s changed. People do, you know?”
Lizzy cocked an eye at him. There was a smear of soot on her right cheek, like an angry bruise. “She just hitchhiked across the country with a knapsack and a guitar. She had to sell her van to pay off some debts. She tells fortunes and crashes on couches. Does it sound like she’s changed to you?”
“I think it’s too early to tell. And she is here. I know you have every right to be angry, but I also know you’re not the kind of person who could just toss her mother into the street. For starters, she’s broke. And this is her home. She came home, Lizzy.”
Lizzy kept her eyes on the ground as she scraped a streak in the soot with her bootheel. “She gave up the right to call this home a long
