Running From Love (7 page)

“I thought you’d take over the company sooner. I’d hoped it would be when you finished your MBA, but I understood when you said you needed time.” She took a drink of her water. “Now your birthday is a month away, you’re back, and it’s time for you to run the company.” She looked pointedly at Trevor. “You know the terms. If you don’t take over by your birthday, we’ll be forced to go public and you’ll receive nothing from the sale.” 

Trevor leaned back in his chair. “I love writing. I’m not an executive, I’m an artist. I can’t run Up Side.”

“Can’t or won’t?” Adele rose and walked toward her desk. She lifted a picture of her and Trevor’s dad on their wedding day.

“Your father had dreams.” Adele traced the frame with her fingertip. “Other things he wanted to do with his life, but he gave them up for you and for the family.” She turned toward Trevor. “You know he was a classical pianist. He had perfect pitch, was an amazing musician. What do you think Grandpa Brice thought of the idea of your father foregoing a career at Up Side Burger to become a musician?”

Trevor closed his eyes. These family stories had been repeated to him his entire life. How Grandpa Brice had nearly lost his mind when Dad went to him and told him that he was leaving Los Angeles for New York. Grandpa had disowned Dad, had sent him away without a dime. Had said, go play your music, but don’t come back. Then Dad met Mom in a club in Brooklyn where he was playing two nights a week for free meals.

“Why was he struggling like that? Why did he want to? The whole thing was ridiculous. He came back and he was happy. He never regretted making his music a hobby and focusing on Up Side.” Adele turned to Trevor. “He was happy.
We
were happy. Once you were born, he understood even more what he was working for and why his own father worked so hard.” Adele set the picture back on her desk. “Taking over Up Side isn’t a sacrifice, Trevor, it’s a gift, to you from your entire family. Don’t throw away the company that your grandparents and your father and even I worked so hard to be able to give to you.”

Trevor stood. “Mom, I can’t do what you, and Grandma, and Grandpa and even Dad did. I can’t sacrifice my entire life for”—he lifted his hands and looked around the room that had been first his Grandpa’s and Dad’s and now Mom’s—“I can’t sacrifice my entire life and all my dreams for Up Side. I don’t understand—”

“Dammit, Trevor, I let you go away! I didn’t push you. I thought if you had time for this fantasy life of yours you’d come back and understand what you’re meant to do, the responsibility you’re meant to take on.”

“Mom, really?”

“Trevor, this decision doesn’t just affect our family. Think of everyone who works for Up Side. The families and people who depend on their paychecks. We’re a good solid company. We have a payroll of over twenty million dollars every two weeks. What’s going to happen to all those people when we’re forced to go public? You think a corporation with shareholders is going to provide tuition reimbursement and healthcare and a living wage? Do you?” Mom walked toward a framed photo on the wall, of his grandparents in front of their first store in Venice. “In grad school you did case studies on burger places. You
know
what’ll happen if Up Side is sold. How many companies of any kind still have pension programs? How do you think Becky can afford to move to Paris when she retires? What happens to that, Trevor? Tell me what happens to all of the people who’ve dedicated their work and their lives to us.”

Trevor filled his lungs with a long deep breath. Many people helped make Up Side Burger a success. Mom squeezed his arm. Her voice softened. Her eyes pleaded with him to try to understand. “You’ve got a month until your birthday. Don’t decide now, just think about this.” She turned her face toward a picture of all the Up Side employees, taken at the last company picnic. “Think about all of them.”

Heat thrummed through his body. He was caught between what Mom expected from him and what he wanted. A hard place he’d inhabited for most his life. This feeling of frustration had propelled him to leave L.A. and go to Mesquale. His teeth ground together. “I’ll think about it, Mom.”

“Good,” Adele smiled. “That’s all I can ask.”

Poppy wasn’t a nanny or a mother and knew very little about childcare, but in three days she’d managed to keep her two nieces alive and get some of the messes in Mimi’s house wrangled. All of the above went into the win column. Each day Poppy bathed and fed the girls and Mimi went to bed early and left for the hospital each morning.

With small children around, an extra pair of hands was essential. How did Mimi manage this every day? Poppy scanned the playground, where Laura stood at the top of the slide waiting her turn while Hazel napped in her stroller. Today Poppy had packed a picnic lunch for all four of them. Mimi wasn’t leaving for the hospital until late afternoon.

“Mom asks about you.” Mimi sat on the blanket beneath a giant willow tree and picked at apple slices. 

Poppy’s stomach tightened. She’d been avoiding conversations about Therese and her health, not because Poppy didn’t want to listen to Mimi, but because Poppy really didn’t want to hear about Therese.

Mimi’s gaze latched onto Laura, who now threw her body onto the slide and, with a gargantuan grin, giggled all the way down to the spot where she landed on the sand. She looked at Mimi and Poppy and held her arms above her head. Mimi mimicked the motion and Laura dashed back toward the stairs to go down the slide again.

“This was a brilliant idea.” Mimi smoothed wrinkles out of the blanket. “Thank you for doing it. Thank you for being here and helping.”

“I want to help …” Poppy started. “I just don’t want to …” Her words drifted off. She felt so unforgiving, so selfish, so cold, but the woman who had given birth to Poppy had ditched her. Therese hadn’t been a mother to Poppy the way Mimi was a mother to her girls.

Mimi leaned on her hand and tucked around her other side. Her gaze remained on Laura. “You know, I didn’t want to see Mom either until I had the girls.”

Poppy nodded. She remembered when Mimi had called and told her she’d seen Therese that first time. It had been so that Therese could meet Laura when she was a baby. Poppy had wanted to scream and throw the phone across the room.

“The girls changed my feelings about Mom for me. But they didn’t change what I thought about what Mom did to us, how she treated us, how she abandoned us.”

Poppy flinched with the word.

“But these two helped me to understand … not
how
she could have done what she did but why.”

Poppy’s eyes flashed and she turned her head toward her sister. “Really? Because I can’t imagine you ever running away from Laura and Hazel. Leaving them with Daniel and never taking care of them again.”

“I can’t either”—a soft smile curved over Mimi’s face—“today.”

Heat simmered in Poppy’s chest. “You’re kidding with that.”

“Half yes, half no. Very few mothers don’t occasionally fantasize about ditching the family and the mess and the crying and the poop and being free. No responsibilities. Sleeping in. A plush bed with clean white sheets.” She bit into a slice of apple. “Funny what becomes a luxury when you have children.”

“But those are fantasies.” Poppy scooped up a handful of sand and slowly let it slide between her fingers. “You’d never leave Laura and Hazel. Therese did. She left us. Forever.”

“I haven’t forgotten, but when I had these two I was able to forgive.”

“How? I’d think seeing how much the girls need you would’ve made you even angrier. I mean, I’ve been with them day and night for three days and even as the Awesome Aunt Poppy, I’m a poor substitute for Mommy. Laura constantly asks for you. ‘When is Mommy coming home? How long will Mommy be gone? Where’s Mommy?’”

“You did the same thing after Mom left.” Mimi’s voice was soft. 

Pain pulsed through Poppy’s chest. “Of course I did.” Her voice scraped out of her throat. “She left me. She left us. At least you and Brian got her for a while. But me? I had her just long enough to remember she was there, but not long enough to know that she loved me. I barely remember a time when she was with us.” Poppy planted her fist into the sand. “I only remember the pain after she left.”

Mimi’s eyes held a wistful sadness. Poppy realized that if her big sister could take away the pain that scarred her heart she would. Hadn’t Mimi dedicated her life to trying to make Poppy feel whole? Her teenage years and early twenties had been all about helping Poppy grow up.

“I’m just saying, she asks about you.” Mimi brushed hair from her forehead. She pulled her gaze from Laura and looked at Poppy. “She wants to see you.”

Poppy pulled her legs up in front of her body and clasped her arms around her shins. “I don’t want to see her.” She rested her chin on her knees and slid her face to the side. Her cheek rested on her kneecaps. “I don’t think I ever will.”

Mimi nodded. “Okay.” She raised an eyebrow. “I can understand that, but you need to know there isn’t much time. You need to make peace with the fact that according to the doctors we should be thinking about hospice soon.”

Poppy pressed her lips into a thin line. Heat pricked the backs of her eyes. Damn Therese. Damn the fact that she’d abandoned them all and now,
now
wanted to see them. What a lousy hand she’d been dealt. Why couldn’t she have gotten a mom like Laura and Hazel had gotten?

“You need to find some closure with this, Poppy. You need to sort out how you’ll feel if you never see her again, because that never is going to happen soon.”

Poppy pressed her tongue to the top of her mouth and forced her tears into submission. How did you forgive someone who’d split your heart in two? How could she even be in the same room with Therese? Poppy had rehearsed all the things she wanted to say, all the angry words she wanted to unleash, to let Therese know how badly she’d shattered Poppy’s heart and ruined her chance of ever trusting anyone again. Of ever giving her heart away.

Mimi stood and dusted off the back of her skirt. “Brian is coming in to L.A. day after tomorrow.” 

If her big brother was flying all the way to Los Angeles from Malaysia then things really weren’t going well for Therese. “What about Dad?”

Mimi shook her head and pulled at the hair falling from her ponytail. “I don’t know. I haven’t spoken to him in a while. I think Brian’ll call him.” Mimi looked at Poppy. “Dad wasn’t very happy when I started speaking to Mom.”

“Of course not.” Poppy trailed her fingers through the sand. A fractured family full of pain. To be around either of her parents was torture. 

“I’m excited for the girls to see Brian. I think Laura was Hazel’s age and in this same stroller the last time he visited.” Hazel stirred and let out the tiniest mewling sound. “I just wish it wasn’t for something like this.” Mimi peeked beneath the yellow blanket that was spread out over the stroller. “She’s waking up,” Mimi whispered.

“Mama!” Laura yelled from the swings. “Look at me!”

“Good girl!” Mimi called. “That’s right, legs out, legs in, legs out, legs in.”

Poppy remembered that singsong call from her own childhood. Mimi had been so patient, teaching her to swing and ride a bike and doing all the things that a mother was meant to do for a small child. Now she was doing all of the same wonderful things again for her own daughters. Mimi lifted Hazel from her stroller. Her big blue eyes took in the entire world. “How’s my little girl? How is she?” Mimi asked in a breathy voice filled with joy.

Laura’s little legs reached higher and higher toward the bright blue sky. What if Therese had stayed and been a mom to Poppy? Would she have been able to live a normal life? Would she have been able to give her heart to Trevor? To commit? How, now, when Therese was dying, was Poppy meant to feel bad and to forgive her?

A desire to run, to flee, to take her two bags and get a ticket to Hong Kong surged through her body. Brian was coming. He’d stay with Mimi and the girls. He could be with Mimi when Therese died.

“Oh no,” Mimi’s shirt was covered in drool. “Pop, can you get me a rag?.”

Yeah, Poppy could leave, but who would help Mimi the way Mimi had once upon a time helped her? She handed Mimi the towel. Mimi dabbed at her chest with one hand as she cradled Hazel against her side with the other.

Once cleaned off, Mimi settled down into a cross-legged seat on the blanket with Hazel.  “You know, I forgot to ask you. Whatever happened to that guy? The poet? What was his name? Terrance, or Tyler, or … started with a T?”

“Trevor.” His name on Poppy’s lips sent desire mixed with sadness rolling through her body.

“Trevor! That’s it. What happened with him? Seemed like you two were kind of …” She tossed the rag toward the diaper bag. “I don’t know … serious?”

Poppy looked toward Laura. She sat beneath a giant playground turtle beside a little boy with blond curls.

“He … his contract at Mesquale was up too.”

Mimi unsnapped her shirt. “Right. I remember that part. Wasn’t he going to Hong Kong too?”

Poppy shook her head. “No, I mean he wanted to, we wanted to—”

“Oh Pop, I’m sorry.” Mimi brought Hazel to her breast. “We ruined your holiday.”

“No, no, no.” Poppy waved her hand. “It wasn’t like that. You know me, different guy every six months. I’m not about to get serious with a bartender from Mesquale. Right? A poet? That’s a bit dodgy, isn’t it?”

“Hmm,” Mimi said. “Seemed a bit more serious to me the way you talked about him.” She lifted an eyebrow. “I couldn’t remember the last time you told me about someone you were dating. He sounded nice. Wasn’t he from California?”

Poppy shrugged. The conversation was too close to her heart. “I think. San Francisco, Los Angeles … I’m not sure.”

“Not sure? Or maybe just don’t want to know? Always the same Poppy. Love them and leave them. Won’t be seeing you tied down with little ones anytime soon.”

“No, you won’t.” Poppy smiled. “Being Awesome Auntie is enough for me.” She shook her head. “I don’t know how you do it, really.” And three months ago those words would have been true, but last night, as she’d bathed Laura, her niece’s little arms had curved around Poppy’s neck. As she inhaled the sweet warm scent of clean little girl, Poppy for the first time in forever thought of having a home. A husband. A family. The one person who had been in her mind was Trevor.