Home to Harmony. Dawn Atkins

told you before we’re not an assembly line.”

      Calm, calm, calm. Lucy had asked her to push this issue with Aurora, so Christine would do her best. “Lucy and I worked out a plan. By enhancing the kiln, adding a second shift, plus some on-call part-timers, it’ll be easy. No worries for you or pressure. In your condition, you need low stress, so—”

      “You let me worry about my condition.” Her mother glared at her. “You could stand to lower your stress, too. You act like if you hold still for one minute the world will stop turning.”

      Christine closed her eyes to collect herself. She tried to rise above, but her mother’s digs and grumbles stung like sandpaper on a sunburn. “It’s your show, Aurora. If you don’t want ads, we won’t buy ads. But Lucy is getting frustrated. If you don’t watch it, you’ll lose her.”

      Her mother stopped rocking and seemed to consider that. “Just be sure you stick around until every kink is worked out, like you said you would.” There was that underlying plea again: Please stay.

      The request felt like a weight on Christine’s chest, making it hard to breathe. She couldn’t stay. No way. David hated it here, for one thing. He had school and she had plans to open her own agency. She had a life in Phoenix. Here was an awkward limbo.

      She comforted herself with the thought that Aurora must be feeling weak still. As soon as she was herself again, she’d probably pack Christine’s bags herself.

      “I’ll stay until you boot me out. How’s that?” she said, using the cheery voice of a nurse with a grumpy patient.

      “See that you do,” Aurora said, as if she’d won a fight. “And do something with your room before you go. Paint it, replace that god-awful furniture with stuff from the spare room. That pink-and-gingham mess depresses the hell out of me.”

      Great. Another mean zing to Christine’s heart. So much for Bogie’s claim that Aurora meditated about Christine in the room she’d kept the same all these years. The man lived in a sunny-side-up haze.

      “Well, I like my old room,” Christine said just to be stubborn. “It’s darling. It makes me think of fairy tales.” She grinned.

      “Good God,” her mother groused, looking off across the yard in the dark to where mesquite trees were silhouetted by moonlight. Was she smiling? Maybe.

      Mission accomplished, more or less, so Christine rose from the hammock to go to David.

      “You do need to cut David some slack,” Aurora said.

      Anger spiked in Christine. Do not yell. Stay calm. “Excuse me, Aurora, but you have no idea what I’ve been through with him this last year.”

      “I see what I see.”

      Christine made herself count to ten—twice. “You promised to back me up with him.”

      “I am backing you up. I told him to follow the rules.”

      “And urged him to drive a car without a license.”

      Aurora shrugged. “It’s summer vacation. He’s away from his friends. Give him a break.”

      “A break? I had to beg the principal not to expel him. He’s got schoolwork he has to do if there’s any hope he can rescue enough credits to be a junior. Plus, we agreed to therapy. Real therapy, not crackpot tips from Doctor Mike, who got his doctorate from Wacko State University.”

      “Doctor Mike is a great guy.”

      “He’s a joke. Now I have to find someone in Preston.”

      “Anything else I did wrong?”

      “Since you asked, I don’t like David in such a faraway room. The last thing he needs is more freedom.”

      “You weren’t much older when you left home, you know.”

      “You think that was a good thing?” It was the loneliest she’d ever felt.

      “It was what you wanted.” Her mother rocked back and forth.

      She so much wanted to yell, but she kept her voice level. “I was a kid. I didn’t know what I wanted.” Aurora hadn’t even tried to stop her. Christine had hung back for a good hour before buying her bus ticket, secretly hoping Aurora would come to get her. But Aurora had let her go. Just like that.

      “I will not leave my son to struggle on his own.”

      “Like I did you?” Aurora said. Christine was startled to see hurt flicker in her mother’s brown eyes. “It was your life, Crystal. Holding you back would have made me a hypocrite after all I preached about choice and self-determination.”

      “Sorry, but I was your daughter, not a political statement,” she said fiercely. Bitter hurt rose from deep within her. Maybe Aurora loved her, but it wasn’t any love Christine recognized—then or now.

      Aurora didn’t speak for a long moment and when she did, her tone was softer. “All I know is that my folks tried to lock me in and it made me desperate to escape. I did, but I had a weak moment when I found I was pregnant. The best thing they ever did was not let me back in. It made me stronger. That’s what leaving did for you. It made you independent.”

      Not even close. Christine had been lost and scared and lonely until she’d latched on to Skip, a life raft in rough waters, she’d thought…until he dumped her into the deep again.

      But that was old news. She’d learned and grown, so what was the point in rehashing it? What mattered now was David. “David’s growing up too fast. He needs to catch up with himself.”

      “It’s the nature of kids to break away.”

      “It’s the nature of kids to change their minds on a dime.”

      Her mother sighed. “You were always so sure you were right. You had these pictures in your head of home, family, work, life, and nothing ever measured up. You wore me out.”

      The feeling’s mutual. But saying so would not help. “All I ask is that you don’t undercut my authority with my son and—”

      Aurora bent forward and coughed, holding on to her chest, her face tight with pain.

      “Are you all right?” Panic surged inside Christine. She’d let her anger show and it had upset her ill mother. “Can I get you water? A pain pill?” She felt sick. She’d picked a fight with a fragile woman, not the hard-as-nails, blunt mother she’d grown up with. Shame on her.

      “Stop that. My stitches burn when I cough, that’s all.”

      “I didn’t mean to agitate you. I’m here to help and—”

      “I said stop it, dammit. I’m not dying. I’m fine. Better than ever.” Aurora pushed up from her chair and stomped toward the door. Reaching it, she hesitated, then turned around. “Hell, that’s not how I meant that to go.”

      She lifted a hand as if to reach out to Christine, then dropped it. “So…just…good night then,” she said, disappearing without waiting for Christine’s response.