The Sweetheart Bargain (A Sweetheart Sisters Novel) (36 page)

“Why?” Olivia asked again, louder this time.

The stone stared back at her, silent, cold.

BRIDGET TUTTLE

BELOVED MOTHER

Yeah, beloved by Diana, who had known her, who had all those years and all that time to say good-bye to Bridget. Beloved by the daughter she had kept. A total stranger to the one she had left.

“Why? Why didn’t you want me?” Olivia asked, the words a pained whisper that tore at her throat. The stone didn’t respond, nor were there any mystical whispers on the wind. There was nothing but the same thing Olivia had had all her life.

Silence.

She clawed at the butterfly necklace, tore the chain from her neck, and thrust it toward the stone. “You leave me this and that stupid, run-down house. Nothing else. Not so much as a
Hey, I’m sorry I left you
note on a Post-it. No explanation, just something that needs work and money and time. Why would you do that to me? Didn’t you even think about how much that would hurt?”

“I know why she did it.”

Olivia spun around. Diana stood behind her, her eyes shaded by sunglasses, her slim figure obscured by her lab coat. Olivia pressed a hand to her startled heart. Oh God, she hoped her sister hadn’t heard that tirade. “Diana. I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were behind me.”

“I come here almost every day.” Diana climbed the little hill and stood next to Olivia. Her gaze dropped to the gravestone. She bit her lip, clasped her hands. The two sisters shared the space on that silent hill for a long moment.

“I come here for the same reason as you did. I want answers.” Diana sighed. “Answers I’ll probably never have.”

What questions could Diana have? Had Bridget been just as closed off with the daughter she had raised as she’d been with the one she’d given up? “I don’t understand why she wouldn’t at least want to say something to me, or tell me something, anything about why she left me behind. In the end, she left me . . . nothing. Nothing that was really
her
.”

Diana shrugged. “Mom wasn’t the kind of person who kept a lot of sentimental kind of things. She was . . . practical. She said she had the memories and that’s all she needed.”

“Well, she didn’t even have those with me.” Why had she even bothered to come to this place? There was nothing here that Olivia wanted. Olivia pivoted toward her sister and held out the necklace. “Here. I think this is more yours than mine.”

Diana caught the butterfly charm in her palm. “Where did you get this?”

“The lawyer gave it to me when he came to tell me about inheriting the house. It was in an envelope, along with a picture of the house. My legacy.” She scoffed. “Such as it was.”

“This . . .” Diana’s eyes misted, and she curled her hand around the necklace. “This never left her neck. I wondered what happened to it. One day it was on her neck, and the next, it was gone. I asked her about it, but she just said she gave it away. She told me that she gave it to someone who needed what was inside. She was so sick by then, I thought it was the morphine talking. She’d had all kinds of crazy requests those last few days. And I thought this was another one of them.”

“Someone needed what was inside?” Olivia said. “But it’s just a necklace. There’s nothing inside.”

“Oh, but there is. Watch.” Diana ran her thumbnail along the edge of the butterfly. One wing sprang up, pivoting open on a miniature hinge hidden inside the thorax. Diana blinked, brows knitted together. “This isn’t the picture I remember Mom having inside here. Of course, I haven’t seen the inside of this necklace in years and years. But look, she changed the picture. It’s . . . us.” Diana turned the necklace toward Olivia.

And there, tucked inside the wing of the butterfly, sat two tiny pictures. One of Diana and one of Olivia, both as older teens. It took Olivia a moment to place the photo, to wrap her head around how the image could be here in this necklace she had never seen, worn by a woman she had never met. “That’s me. It’s one of the photos in my high school yearbook. How did she get this?”

“I have no idea. She never told me about it.”

Olivia traced over the miniature image of herself and realized this picture changed everything. It meant that somehow, Bridget had kept tabs on her firstborn daughter. Yet never made contact. Why?

“Is there anything else?” she asked.

“There should be.” Diana turned the necklace around, and repeated the actions with the other wing. When the enamel side popped up, something small and gold tumbled to the ground. Olivia bent down and fished it out from between the blades of thick green grass.

“It’s a key,” Olivia said, placing it in Diana’s hand.

Her sister flipped the key over in her palm a couple of times, confusion in her eyes that yielded to understanding. “Of course. It all makes sense now. I can’t believe it took me this long to figure it out.” She pressed a hand to her mouth. “Oh, Mom, I’m not surprised you’d do something like this, unique and clever and unexpected.”

“Something like what?”

Diana lifted her gaze. Her green eyes mirrored Olivia’s. Same color, same shape, both shining with hope and unshed tears.

“She gave you the key.” Diana held it up, and the tiny key caught the sun with a twinkle. “And me the lock.”

“I don’t understand.”

Diana closed the butterfly’s wings, then handed the necklace and the key back to Olivia. “Come on. I have something to show you.”

* * *

Olivia wasn’t sure what she expected when she saw Diana’s house. Certainly not the warm, cozy, inviting space that Diana had created in the modest ranch. She’d decorated in soft earth tones, with thick beige sofas in the living room and a pale oak table and chairs in the kitchen, offset by cream-colored tiles and vanilla-painted trim. Pictures of Jackson filled one wall of the entry hall and the space above a dark-brown tufted leather bench that sat in the foyer, inviting you to sit down, tug off your shoes, and stay awhile.

Three dogs greeted them at the door, one an ancient chocolate lab, another a shepherd mix, and a tiny cairn terrier who danced in front of the bigger dogs. Diana apologized for the exuberant greeting and shooed the dogs outside. “Would you like a glass of water? Some coffee? I have lemonade, too, and some soda, if Jackson didn’t drink it all.”

“Ice water is fine.” Olivia stepped into the kitchen and slid into a padded chair. Pale-yellow walls accented the distressed vanilla cabinets and light-amber countertop. Everything was neat and tidy: washed dishes drying in the strainer, clear canisters of flour, sugar, coffee, and tea marching along the far counter. A sunflower-shaped clock ticked the time away on the wall, while a calendar on the fridge held the only signs of clutter—dozens of notes and phone numbers paper-clipped to the pages of the calendar, along with a running grocery list hanging from a magnet. “You have a gorgeous house.”

“Thanks. It helps that I have total control over the décor. For all the rooms except for Jackson’s.” She let out a little laugh while she filled two glasses with ice water and sat down in the opposite chair. She watched the dogs chase each other in the fenced yard for a little while, then let out a breath, turned back to the table, and steepled her fingers. “Sorry. You’re not here for small talk, I’m sure.”

“It’s okay.” Small talk might not tell Olivia anything about Bridget, but these little moments about decorating and dogs and kids gave her a peek into her sister’s world.

Diana, however, had already shifted into serious gear. “About a week before Mom died, she asked me to go to her house and retrieve a few things, and keep them at my house. I asked her why, and she said she just felt better knowing her things were in my possession. She was worried that while she was in the hospital, her house would be empty indefinitely. She was sick, really sick, and I didn’t want to argue with her, so I did what she asked.” Diana got to her feet, left the room, then returned a moment later. “One of the things she had me get was this box.”

Diana laid a bread-box-sized container on the table. Constructed out of heavy cardboard and covered with pink-and-white-striped fabric, the box looked like an oversized version of those photo boxes people bought in hobby shops. The lid was secured with a hasp, and dangling from that was a small gold lock. It could have been picked or broken open easily. The lock mainly served as a pause rather than actual security.

“Why didn’t you open it?” Olivia asked.

Diana sighed and retook her seat. “My relationship with Mom was complex. She and I loved the same things and dedicated our lives to the same things, but we couldn’t seem to find a common middle ground. At the same time, she could be quirky and fun, and I remember days when I was little where she would keep me home from school and we’d spend the day exploring a creek or going to the beach and looking for horseshoe crabs. She would collect things from those journeys, little mementos that she said she was going to put in shadow boxes or make into crafts or something someday. But she never did, and when she had me grab this box, I figured that’s what was in it. After she died, things with Jackson got more complicated, and I forgot about the box. Until I saw the key.”

Olivia wondered about the things-getting-more-complicated-with-Jackson comment, but didn’t ask. The connection with her sister was building a little at a time, and if Diana wanted to open up, Olivia suspected she would. Instead, Olivia turned her attention to the box. Anticipation filled her, as if it were Christmas morning and she had a mysterious package from Santa under the tree. “Let’s open it. Together.”

“It could be nothing, you know. A bunch of shells or some odd-shaped rocks.”

“But we won’t know if we don’t look.”

“You’re right. Are you ready?” Diana looked at Olivia, and Olivia looked at Diana. Two women, joined by a common mother, and linked after her death by a key and a lock. Had Bridget purposely left Olivia the house and the necklace, as a way to force her to connect with Diana? Either way, here they were, in Diana’s sunny, cozy kitchen, together.

“Yeah, I’m ready.”

“Go ahead,” Diana said. “You’re the one with the key.”

Olivia inserted the key into the lock and held her breath, worried for a second that it wouldn’t work. She turned the key, heard a soft click, and then the lock dropped open. She slid it out of the hasp and laid it on the table. Diana leaned forward and lifted the lid.

The box bulged with a haphazard collection of pictures, newspaper clippings, and sheets of paper. On the top sat two white envelopes, inscribed in loose, loopy handwriting with
Olivia
on one,
Diana
on the other. Diana handed her an envelope. “This is yours.”

For a second, Olivia just ran her finger over the letters.
Olivia.
Bridget had written this, had known her name, the name that Anna and Dan Linscott had baptized her with after they’d signed the adoption papers. What else had Bridget known about the daughter she’d given up?

The envelope’s flap yielded with a slight tug, and a thick letter slid out. Olivia unfolded the sheets, but the words blurred in her vision. All she saw was the lines and lines of Bridget’s handwriting, lines written to her, the communication she had waited so long to have, and now held in her palm.

Dear Olivia,

My sweet, darling daughter. Where do I begin? How can I possibly explain the last thirty-one years and why I did what I did? I am so sorry to give you this letter instead of telling you these things to your face, but to be honest, I was always afraid that you would hate me for leaving you that day, and I couldn’t bear to see that in your eyes.

Please don’t hate me, Olivia. I can take anything but that.

I was seventeen when you were born. My home life was terrible, and the first chance I got, I ran away, following a guy I thought I loved to Boston. He was gone as soon as the pregnancy test came back positive. My boyfriend died a few months later from a drug overdose. I’ve enclosed his name, but I don’t know much more about him than that.

I was scared, young, unemployed, and didn’t know what to do. After you were born, the nurse let me hold you, and in that moment, I fell in love with you. It was as if she had placed my heart in my arms. You were so beautiful, so perfect, and so much more everything than I ever imagined. More wonderful, more amazing, more fascinating. I loved you, oh, how I loved you.

Walking out of that hospital was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I wanted so badly to keep you and to raise you myself, but I realized how selfish it would be. I had no money, no place to live, no boyfriend, nothing at all. I knew there would be a family who could love you and give you everything you deserved. So I walked away and told myself I’d never look back.

But as the years passed, I couldn’t forget you. I had Diana, and every moment I spent with her made me wonder about you. I compared her milestones to the ones I had missed with you. Did you walk at eleven months? Did your hair come in blond or brown? Did you like bananas and hate peas? But most of all, were you happy? Were you loved?