“Well, what else would you call me when I didn’t even know she’d taken a job?”
“It’s not a job. It’s something to occupy her time,” Terry corrected. “You didn’t expect her to sit around all day watching soaps, did you? Except for ours, of course.”
Callie sighed. “I don’t know what I expected,” she admitted. But, she thought resolutely, it was about time she figured it out.
* * *
Regina glanced up guiltily when she heard Callie’s key turning in the lock. If there’d been time, she would have swept the huge stack of mail into the tote bag Neil had delivered earlier, but something told her it was just as well that she was about to be caught. It was a silly secret to be keeping in the first place. She and Callie had little enough to say to each other as it was. She still didn’t understand how a mother and daughter who’d once shared everything could have drifted so far apart.
As she waited for Callie to discover her at the kitchen table surrounded by Terry’s fan mail, she tightened her grip on the fancy fountain pen Neil had insisted she use.
“Mom?”
“In here.”
Callie appeared in the doorway and surveyed the neat piles of envelopes that were already prepared for the morning mail. Regina watched her closely for some hint of surprise or disapproval. Instead, the expression on her daughter’s face was unreadable. When had she become so adept at hiding her feelings? Regina wondered.
“Terry’s mail?” Callie asked.
Regina nodded. “He told you, I suppose.”
“He mentioned that you and Neil had worked out an arrangement.”
Regina still couldn’t gauge her mood. “Are you upset about it?”
Callie shrugged, feigning indifference as she always had when she’d felt slighted. Regina recognized the gesture at once.
“Why on earth would I be upset?” Callie asked, her tone neutral. “If you were looking for something to do, though, you should have told me.”
“I didn’t want you to think I was complaining.”
Callie sighed and pulled out a chair opposite her. “Mother, as long as you’re here, I want you to be happy. Get out, see things, meet people, whatever you want to do.”
That said, Callie studied her so intently that Regina found herself squirming.
“Are you just doing this for the money?” Callie asked worriedly. “Because if that’s it, I can certainly give you more spending money. I don’t want you shut up in here because you don’t think you can afford to do things.”
“The money has nothing to do with it,” Regina denied vehemently. “I wanted to make myself useful. It doesn’t take a minute to keep this apartment straightened up. You’re almost never home for meals, so there’s no point in cooking. I’m used to going from sunrise to sunset. Idleness doesn’t suit me.”
“You should have told me,” Callie repeated.
“And what would you have suggested?” Regina retorted, anticipating exactly the sort of guilty expression she got. “There, I knew it. You would have gotten that precise look on your face while you tried desperately to figure out what to do with me. It didn’t take Neil but a minute to think up this idea.”
Not until the words were out of her mouth and she saw Callie’s hurt reaction did she realize that she’d compared her daughter to a near-stranger and implied that Callie had come up wanting. “I’m sorry,” she said at once. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
“Sure you did,” Callie said. “And it’s okay. I deserve it.” She looked Regina straight in the eye. “Maybe I’ve just thought of you for so long as my mother, I’ve never stopped to think about you being a person. Of course, Neil would see you in a different light.”
Regina did something then that she hadn’t done in years. She reached across the table and clasped her daughter’s hand. Such a small gesture but one so rare she couldn’t even recall the last time she’d made it, the last time Callie had allowed it, for that matter.
“Why wouldn’t you think of me as your mother?” she chided gently. “That’s who I am.”
“But you’re more than that, and I should have seen it.”
“Then maybe it’s a good thing I’m here, after all. Maybe we can both spend this time discovering who we’ve become.”
To Regina’s surprise, Callie’s eyes shimmered with unshed tears. “I’d like that, Mother. I really would.”
“Me, too.” She released Callie’s hand, stood up and put a kettle on to boil water. “Why don’t we toast that with a cup of hot chocolate.”
“With marshmallows?” Callie asked. “The way we used to celebrate special occasions?”
Regina grinned at this sophisticated young woman who suddenly sounded so much like the child with whom she had once taken such joy in sharing things. “Is there any other way?”
“When did you buy hot chocolate and marshmallows?” Callie asked as she retrieved a pair of mugs and set them on the table.
“The minute I saw you didn’t have any in the cupboard.” She winked at Callie. “Seemed to me you must have just run out.”
“Nine or ten years ago, more likely. Chad wasn’t exactly a hot-chocolate kind of man.”
“Forget about that terrible man and what he liked and didn’t like,” she said. Then she added more gently, “Not everything from the past has to be sacrificed when you make a new future, you know.” She put the steaming cup of hot chocolate in front of her daughter, then fixed her own and sat back down. “Tell me about your day.”
With startling eagerness, Callie did just that. As her daughter described this strange make-believe world she worked in, Regina sat back and let the words flow over her. Five words, she thought with a sense of amazement. That was all it had taken—“tell me about your day”—and she and Callie were communicating, really communicating, for the first time in years.
“So, anyway, there I was with all this mail piled up around me, trying to figure out what on earth I was going to do with it, when Terry came along and
