Page 38 of Reckless
“Hi, Mom, I’m here! And I have a surprise!”
“You do?” I watched Mrs. Cavendish’s face as she came out of the kitchen, waiting for her to scowl. Instead, when her eyes landed on me, they lit up. “Gage!”
Maybe she didn’t remember what happened.
“Mrs. Cavendish.”
She gave me a stink-eye. “You used to call me Mom. I’ll settle for Marie now, but that’ll still be strange coming from you. It’s great to see you. How are you doing?” She pulled me into a motherly hug. “I’m so sorry to hear about Babs. It was such a shock for me.”
“Yeah, it was for me as well. But she’s doing as well as can be expected. She seems so strong.”
“She’s always been that way, hasn’t she? Strong through it all.”
“Oh, Mom.” Kelly slapped her palm against her forehead. “I got so busy talking to Gage on the way over I forgot to pick you up a newspaper. I’ll just run to the store, it’ll only be a minute.”
“I can get my own pa—”
“No, Mom. It’s fine.” She darted her eyes between us, looking suddenly nervous. “You’ll be okay?”
“We’ll be fine,” I assured her.
Mrs. Cavendish nodded. “I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”
I loved the Cavendish kitchen. It always smelled of baking, even if there wasn’t anything in the oven. At least, it used to. Looking around, the kitchen barely looked used, and the usual baking wrack that had once never left the counter next to the oven was missing.
Sadness swam in my stomach while I considered all the things lost. I’d moved on with my life, but it seemed some of the people I’d left behind in New Hope hadn’t managed to. They were stuck in a rut.
I wanted to help Kelly out of that rut. I didn’t know how I could help her mom, but I’d try.
While the coffee maker heated up and gurgled out a strong smelling brew, Kelly’s mom asked me about the places I’d traveled. As I told her about Japan and London, I imagined taking Kelly away from this small, constricting place and showing her the world. After glimpsing a bit of her old spark over the past couple of days, I wondered if she’d be willing to leave. I’d love to take her to London, to Tokyo, to Cape Town…all the amazing cities we’d played.
The world was a much bigger place than New Hope. I wanted to show her that. For her and for myself.
It’d be amazing to have her by my side, because over the past couple days, I’d learned one thing. What we once shared was real. Kelly was real. She wouldn’t ever be one of the hangers-on who only wanted to be near me for my money and fame. She’d loved me when I was a no one.
And if I wasn’t mistaken, a spark of that love might remain inside her still.
“Kelly worries too much about me.” I jumped when Mrs. Cavendish dragged me from my thoughts. “She seems to think I can’t do anything for myself. I can go to the store, and I do. She just doesn’t know.”
“Oh…” Why was she telling me this? Had she slipped so much that she didn’t even realize she needed help? “I’m sure she’s just trying to care for you.”
“I know that, and don’t get me wrong, I really appreciate it, but I don’t want her to spend her whole life worrying about me. I’m concerned that she’s wasting her life looking after me unnecessarily.”
Mrs. Cavendish poured our coffee and set a mug in front of me at the table, taking a seat across from me. I wondered if she knew I’d taken her daughter’s virginity less than twelve hours ago, would she still confide in me. Or would she find that rolling pin that probably hadn’t been used in years? This had the potential to get sticky, and I didn’t do sticky situations well.
Before I found a way to politely back out of the conversation, she continued, “I know she loves her job here, and I think she’s mostly happy…she tells me she is, but I think Kelly must be lonely. She doesn’t seem to do much aside from work and helping me. I keep telling her she doesn’t need to, but we both know how stubborn she is.”
I grinned. “Kelly’s seems to still be as stubborn as I remember.”
Mrs. Cavendish smiled back at me, but there was a deep sadness in her eyes. “I did need her in the beginning, I’ll admit that. I relied on her too much because I couldn’t cope after Hank and Stephen’s accident, so maybe this is all my fault, but she won’t believe that I’m okay now.”
I parted my lips to ask for more details.
“I’m back!” Kelly yelled from the front of the house, and this time, I could tell it was a fake-happy tone. “I got the paper, and I picked up some milk too. I noticed you were low yesterday.”
Mrs. Cavendish shot me a knowing look. “Thank you, Kelly, that’s great.”
Extracting Kelly from New Hope wouldn’t be as easy as I’d thought. The rut wasn’t something that had just happened, it was a place Kelly’d firmly embedded herself. Clearly, taking care of her mother and the patients at the hospital was her way of coping with what happened to her family.
Would I, even with my promises to show her the world, be enough to pull her away from that?
