At fourteen, Meghan was way past calling her “Mommy.” Except when she wanted something. The something she wanted now was all too apparent, and as Libby had been doing for the past couple months, she wavered about making a decision as to what to do about it. She had never been the indecisive type before—at least not before Rick caused her world to crumble and her self-esteem to plunge—and the very act of hesitating only made her feel less self-assured. She knew Meghan would pick right up on the weakness and Libby braced herself. No doubt her daughter would be all over her in a second.
“Mommy, come on.” Meghan tugged her toward the silver Subaru. “If we leave now, maybe nobody will know we were ever here.”
As arguments went, it wasn’t the most convincing.
Libby glanced around at the city neighborhood where the buildings stood so close together they might as well have been sided with Velcro. The main street had small businesses interspersed between houses, bars and art galleries. In the few minutes she and Meghan had been standing there staring at the building with the faded sign over the front door that declared it Barb’s Knits, they had yet to see one other person come or go at either the bakery on the right or the beauty shop on the left. And, of course, no one was shopping at Barb’s Knits these days; the store had been closed for nearly a year.
Always conciliatory, Libby offered her daughter a smile even though she knew it would be met with a sneer. “Honestly, honey, I don’t think you have to worry about being seen at the wrong time or in the wrong place. It’s early and things are pretty quiet around here. There’s not much chance of anybody seeing us. Look over there.” She pointed toward a scrappy German shepherd who was eyeballing them from the park across the street. “Looks like he’s the welcoming committee, and my guess is he’s not going to tell anybody.”
“It’s creepy.” Meghan shivered inside the pink hoodie Libby had bought her at the Gap for her last birthday. “The whole place looks like something out of a Stephen King movie. Look at it!” Her top lip curled, Meghan glanced around the perimeter of the park. For Libby, the old neighborhood had a certain appeal. It was anchored by an imposing church, dotted with park benches, bus stops and coffee houses. Except for Barb’s Knits—a little seedier than its neighbors and, surprisingly, a little embarrassing because of it—the surrounding shops had the solid feel that bright, new suburban stores never could. Pride of ownership was reflected in everything from the brightly colored and graphically appealing signs to the window boxes planted with summer annuals. Thinking about the generations of people who had put their blood, sweat and tears into the neighborhood and the new generation that worked just as hard to maintain it, Libby felt a sense of belonging. She was part of that new generation now. She had to live up to the promise of the neighborhood and those who had rescued it from melting into urban decay.
It was a scary thought. And exhilarating, too. None of which meant she didn’t sympathize with Meghan.
Like most kids her age, Meghan had been raised to think of the mall as the only place to shop; the bright and the new were all that mattered. Looking back on it now, Libby realized she should have introduced her daughter to the world beyond the confines of their upper-middle-class suburb long before her life—and her marriage—had been pulled out from under her. Whose fault was it that Meghan had seen little of downtown Pittsburgh other than the Science Center, PNC Park, where the Pirates played, and the view from her father’s office? This was new territory for Meghan. Not just a new city but a new way of life. A new home. A new beginning.
Just as it was for Libby herself.
With a deep breath for courage, Libby reminded herself that the transition was bound to be frightening. Just as so much of Meghan’s life had been these past months since Rick had announced he was filing for divorce.
When Meghan started pleading again, Libby didn’t argue. But she wasn’t about to give in, either.
“Mommy!” Meghan’s voice was anguished. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. Let’s go home.”
“We said we were going to make a go of it, remember?” Libby said, and before her daughter could bring up every argument she’d raised in the six weeks since Libby had decided to come to Cleveland, she held up one hand for silence. “We talked about this, Meghan. We decided it would be a new start. An adventure.”
“You decided.” Meghan crossed her arms over her chest. It was clearly a case of the proverbial line in the sand, and Libby wasn’t in the mood.
“It’s the best thing,” she reminded her daughter. “For both of us.”
“For you, maybe. Not for me. I should be home right now. I should be sitting by the pool at Jennifer’s. Or Rollerblading with Emma. Or going to dance class with—”
“There are pools and Rollerblading and dance classes in Cleveland,” Libby told her as she’d told her a hundred times before. “You’re a great kid. You’re popular. You’re a good friend. You don’t have trouble mixing in and you’d be starting high school back in Cranberry, anyway. Instead of meeting new people there, you’ll meet new people here when you start at Central Catholic. You know you will, Meggie. Pretty soon you’ll make lots of new friends in Cleveland.”
“There’s nothing wrong with my old friends.”
Libby let out a slow breath. “You’re absolutely right. They’re great kids and you can e-mail them every day and see them on vacations and on the weekends and holidays when you visit your dad. But here, here is where we’re going to start over.”
“Daddy’s starting over and he didn’t have to leave Pittsburgh to do it.”
It was a low blow, and just as Meghan had calculated, it slammed into Libby like a fist. She stopped herself from sniping back. Oh, it was tempting, but it wasn’t fair to blame Meghan for the pain that gnawed her insides.
“What Daddy’s doing is…” Libby almost let her emotions get the best of her. Immature, selfish and just plain boneheaded were not words she should use to describe Rick. At least not in front of her daughter. Meghan had heard enough of that talk. It was time to turn over a new leaf.
“Daddy’s starting over is different,” she told Meghan instead and she congratulated herself. If Libby pretended she wasn’t talking about the last three months and how her life fell apart and her daughter’s world crumbled, she could almost make herself sound logical and objective about the whole thing. “He’s got a new wife and he and Belinda are going to have a new baby. We’ve got each other and—”
“And this trashy place.” Meghan turned her back on Barb’s Knits. “Did you ever even consider that it might be a dump before you moved us all the way here?”
Of course Libby had. She would have been crazy not to.
But she never imagined it would be this bad.
The thought settled inside her, and even though she knew it wasn’t fair, she automatically compared Barb’s Knits to the rest of the neighborhood.
The rest of the neighborhood won. Hands down.
Once upon a time—and that must have been a very long time before—the building had been not commercial but residential. It had a stone path that led from the sidewalk where they stood, and on either side of the path, flower beds where dandelions poked out of the soil, reaching for the summer sunshine.
Four steps led to a porch where the paint was chipped and a front door that was so caked with dirt it was hard to tell what color it might once have been. The front window was too dirty to see inside, as were the windows in the apartment above the first-floor retail space.
Home, sweet home.
Libby shook her head, clearing it of the fog of doubt that had settled over her with every mile she put between herself and her old life. She knew better than to be surprised by anything she might find inside