Part 26 (2/2)

Samantha caught her mother's arm. ”Mom, thanks. For what you said.”

”Oh, sweetie,” her mother said, ”I should be thanking you.”

”For what? Being so angry?”

Mom sighed. ”Sweetheart, I don't blame you. I know I mishandled things with Waldo.” She hesitated and bit her lip.

”Mom, what is it?” Samantha pressed, now anxious to fully clear the air between them.

Her mother sighed. ”About Waldo.”

Samantha could feel herself stiffen, bracing for a lecture. You should have been nicer to him. He loved you.

Go ahead and say it, she thought. I deserve it.

”He wasn't well.”

Of course he wasn't well. He died. ”What does that mean exactly?”

”He had something called Lewy body disease.”

Ice-cold shock smacked Samantha in the face. ”Lewy... What is that?”

”It's a brain deterioration similar to Alzheimer's,” Mom said wearily.

”So some of the strange things he was doing...” Of course, that explained why his decisions went from incompetent to disastrous. ”How long?” How long had they known? Samantha felt sick.

Her mother shrugged. ”Several months at least. It started with what we thought was restless legs. He was having trouble sleeping. I got him vitamins. They didn't help. Then he fell on the deck. But it was slippery that day, so we didn't think anything of it.”

Samantha remembered that fall. She also remembered hoping it would keep him out of the office and her hair for a few days. Rotten daughter of the year.

”He started forgetting things-”

Like the quarterly taxes.

”-and getting confused. But other times he was fine. We kidded ourselves, saying he was having senior moments, but by October I knew we were dealing with something more. We didn't get the final diagnosis until December. The doctor had ordered a brain scan.” Mom stopped, pressing her lips together while she got control of her emotions and then continued, ”The only way to be completely positive it was Lewy body would've been with an autopsy but I couldn't do that to him. Anyway, the brain scan told us enough.”

Their so-called getaway to Seattle right after Thanksgiving hadn't been a getaway at all. They'd been off seeing doctors, enduring a battery of tests, all alone with no emotional support.

Samantha was going to throw up. Or cry. Or both. ”Why didn't you tell us?” she croaked.

”We didn't want to spoil everyone's Christmas. And you had your hands full at work with holiday orders.”

And fighting with Waldo. Fuming over the penalty Uncle Sam had slapped on them because they'd been late with their quarterly taxes. Creating a scene in his office when she learned he hadn't been able to make the payment on their loan in December. Tattling to Mom.

”Mom, I...” Her throat closed up and she just stood there in the middle of the shop like a big, dumb boulder. All those bizarre purchases he'd made, the paranoia, the increasingly inept decision-making, the financial tangle. Why hadn't she figured out that Waldo's problem was medical?

Because she'd been too busy with the business and with being angry. Now Waldo was up with the angels, practicing his golf putt. When it was her time they'd probably lock the pearly gates and tell her to go look for a hotter climate farther south. Heck, they wouldn't have to tell her. She'd go voluntarily. Why didn't life have a rewind b.u.t.ton?

Now she saw something new in her mother's expression that made her feel even worse. Regret. ”I should have told you as soon as I suspected,” she said to Samantha. ”Obviously it was affecting his ability to run the company.”

Obviously. Samantha should have felt exonerated to hear her mother say this-she'd known all along he wasn't fit to run the company-but all she felt was sad. Here her mother and stepfather had been grappling with life-and-death issues and she'd been having hissy fits because he bought cases of bottled water. ”Mom, I'm so sorry. I wish I'd known.”

”And I wish I'd encouraged Waldo to do something else.”

That made two of them. Poor Waldo had fancied himself a savvy businessman but he'd been out of his depth from the beginning. Still, she could have worked with him, helped him more. If she'd tried harder could she have averted disaster? She'd never know.

”I want you to know that after we found out what was wrong, he was going to step aside,” Mom said. ”We talked about it right before he died. You should have been in charge of the company all along. It was your heritage.”

There it was, out in the open at last, the source of Samantha's anger. Waldo, who'd been the perfect happy ending for her mother, the perfect stepdad, had slipped in and stolen her birthright and Mom had gone along with it. Samantha had been saddled with anger over that ever since, and no matter how she'd tried to hide it or ignore it, the nasty emotion had ridden her hard. But it was time to buck off the saddle. This was baggage she didn't need to carry anymore.

”Can you forgive me for my poor choices?” Mom asked, tears in her eyes.

So many emotions crowded Samantha's throat, all she could manage was, ”Oh, Mom.” And as they hugged she could feel the anger sliding off her.

”I'll make it up to you,” Mom whispered.

”Mom, there's nothing to make up.” Not now. She was the one who had the making up to do, for her bad att.i.tude, her lack of understanding, her resentment of a man she had genuinely cared for once.

Her mother gave her a watery smile and anch.o.r.ed a lock of stray hair behind Samantha's ear. ”If anyone can pull us out of this, you can. Remember your favorite story when you were little?”

”The Little Engine That Could.” Mom still had the book tucked away somewhere, saving it for future grandchildren.

”You've always had such confidence,” Mom said, ”and I'm confident it will stand us in good stead now. We have sweet things to deliver and you're the engine that will take us where we need to go. You have the drive and determination to do it.”

Samantha hoped so. With the highway open again and all the great free publicity maybe, just maybe, she had a chance.

Chapter Twenty.

You can, indeed, mix love and business, and wind up with something wonderful.

-Muriel Sterling, Mixing Business with Pleasure: How to Successfully Balance Business and Love ”Pat, I can't thank you enough for helping me,” Muriel said as they worked their way through the piles of paperwork, bills and bank statements on Waldo's desk.

It had all felt so overwhelming, like the money book she'd gotten from Pat. Tax deductions, refinancing, mortgage rates, compound interest (she was supposed to understand that chart? Really?)-it made her eyes glaze over. She didn't speak this language. This was...math! The book had served a purpose, though. Only a couple of pages of reading was all it took to put her to sleep at night. Better than a sleeping pill.

But that wasn't exactly helping get her financial house in order. An SOS call had brought Pat over, armed with her calculator, and now the two women were about to do battle with the bills.

”I have no idea how I'm going to make what I have stretch,” Muriel confessed. ”All these bills.” She shook her head. ”This is humiliating. I'm an idiot savant. The only thing I can do is write.”

Why, oh, why hadn't she persisted in taking a more active role in the money-managing process when Stephen was alive? Or even Waldo. After Stephen's death she should have dug in and handled everything.

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