Return to Me by Katie Winters

Author:Katie Winters
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sea stories, womens fiction, clean and wholesome romance, women's divorce fiction, small town fiction
Publisher: Katie Winters
Published: 2021-03-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirteen

When Janine arrived home from the Katama Lodge and Wellness Spa, she found her mother dressed in a summer dress, hovering at the hallway mirror, dotting lipstick tenderly across her lips. Janine had another flash of memory — her, age seven or eight, and her mother, just a child herself, around twenty-two or twenty-three. She stood a beautiful creature, at a different mirror, a mirror with a jagged crack down the right-hand side, and performed this very action. She’d then turned swiftly and peered down at little Janine to say, “I won’t be gone late.” It was implicit back then that Nancy couldn’t afford a babysitter. Janine wasn’t invited out on her dates with men— men who would inevitably go on to treat her mother terribly.

Janine often didn’t learn the full details of whatever had gone wrong with each. She only heard the screaming and crying, then watched as her mother fell into a dark pit and wrapped herself up in blankets and drank herself into a stupor.

Nancy turned now to find Janine stationed near her, wordless and overly quiet. Nancy jumped slightly, then forced a smile.

“Oh, darling, I didn’t see you there,” she said.

“You look nice,” Janine returned. “That lipstick suits you perfectly.”

Nancy glanced again toward the mirror and arched an eyebrow. “Do you think so? Elsa helped me pick it out the other day. I realized a few years ago that I couldn’t get away with all that bright red lipstick any longer. Oh, but you were probably never such a red lipstick wearer, were you?”

Janine’s voice quivered with her answer. “Jack’s family wasn’t so keen on bright red. I wore it exactly once, and I felt like Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.”

Nancy’s lips parted with shock. After a dramatic pause, she burst into laughter, then dropped into the little hallway chair. “I have a feeling you have quite a few stories like that.”

“Not many in recent memory,” Janine offered. “Although those first few years...”

“The Potters aren’t exactly known for their kindness,” Nancy returned. “Every person in America knows that.”

“And there I was. Smack-dab in the middle of them.”

“And you even carry their last name.”

They held the silence for a moment. Janine was surprised she’d been so suddenly candid with her mother, as she had set out to be the exact opposite over the previous week. She thought about telling her mother that she’d just met some of the Katama Lodge’s favorite local regulars, but she didn’t want to toss Carmella into the flames before a proper introduction.

“What are you getting ready for?” Janine finally asked.

“Oh, it’s silly, really.” Nancy popped back up from the hallway chair to finalize her makeup. “There’s a festival over in Oak Bluffs, and they want to honor Neal. I said I’d go and make some kind of speech. I don’t know. I’m not really one for the spotlight.”

There was the creak of a floorboard. Suddenly, off to the right, Elsa appeared on the steps. She wore a beautiful light butter yellow dress, which hugged her curves beautifully, and golden earrings dangled from her lobes.

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