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“Who’s Crystal?” David asked her.
“I’ll explain later,” she murmured. God. She’d forgotten about the name thing.
Bogie shifted his weight from side to side, lifted then dropped his arms, as if not knowing whether or not to give her a hug. She decided for him, throwing her arms around him. He was skin and bones. “It’s good to see you,” she said.
He ended the embrace fast, blushing beneath his tan, and studied her. “You’re so pretty, like I expected, but your eyes look tired. We’ll help you with that for sure.”
She flushed at his close attention, surprised and warmed by his obvious affection for her. He’d always been in the background here. “Bogie, this is my son, David.”
“Nice to meet you, young man,” Bogie said, ducking his head. So humble. He’d organized the commune, yet he’d let the much younger Aurora take charge. “Aurora’s lying down. Let me tell her you’re here.”
“Oh, no, let her sleep. Please.” Feeling as rattled as she did, she wouldn’t mind delaying her first contact with her irascible mother.
“She’d never forgive me.” Bogie thudded down the wooden floor of the back hall.
Christine was dripping with sweat, ridiculously nervous. Her mother needed her help and she was here to give it. Maybe it would be as simple as it sounded.
“So…Crystal? What’s that about?” David asked.
“Lord. Aurora changed our names when we got here.”
“She named you Crystal Waters?”
“And she wasn’t joking, either. She wanted it to be a spiritual rebirth, like a baptism. I was to be sharp and true and sweet as the truth.” She’d resisted at first, but her mother had been so excited and happy, she’d given in.
“That is so whack.”
“You’re telling me.” Seeing David so amused, she told more of the story. “Picture the whole second grade laughing their heads off when I got introduced that first day.”
“That would be harsh for sure.” He smiled his old smile and Christine’s heart lifted. So far, so good. “What about Grandma’s name? Aurora sounds made up.”
“It was. Her real name’s Marie. Aurora means dawn. She wanted to experience daybreak as a bright new woman.” The words had stayed with Christine. When her mother had been that happy, Christine had felt swept away on a merry current. When she turned sad or angry, the trip became a churning tumble over sharp rocks. Probably how all kids felt.
“That’s so trippy,” David said, just as Aurora tromped in from the hall, Bogie on her heels.
“I can get out of bed on my own, dammit. Quit treating me like an invalid, Bogart.”
Christine sucked in a breath at how small and frail her mother looked. Aurora had always seemed larger than life and tough as an Amazon warrior, even once Christine became an adult. When David was five, Aurora had come to Phoenix for a short, awkward visit and seemed as substantial and strong as ever.
Christine hid her alarm with a smile. “Aurora, hi.”
As always, her mother’s brown eyes slid away without making contact. “It’s about time you got here. Bogie, get them iced tea. It’s rose hip,” she said to Christine.
“No need to fuss. We snacked the whole trip.” But Bogie was already in the fridge.
“You look wrung out to me,” Aurora insisted. “What are you doing in a silk top out here?”
“I don’t know. It’s light and cool.” She smoothed her hair as if to prove how fresh she was. God. She’d automatically defended herself against her mother’s tossed-off criticism.
“Look at you, David, tall as hell.” Aurora started to move forward—to hug him perhaps?—but instead sank into a chair, breathing heavily.
“Should you be resting?” Christine asked, alarmed at her mother’s weakness.
Aurora drilled her with a look. “Don’t you start the invalid treatment, too.” She swung her gaze to David. “Nice tat.” She meant the ring of yin-yang symbols around David’s heartbreakingly thin upper arm.
“I think it’s awful,” Christine said. It was a Brigitte idea, along with the eyebrow stud.
“It’s a kid’s job to rebel,” Aurora said. “That’s how they individuate. You rebelled by conforming.” She turned to David. “Your mother loved to iron. Can you imagine that around here?” She winked at him. “She brushed her hair a hundred strokes, flossed her teeth every night, followed every rule. We didn’t have many, so she made up some of her own.”
“She still loves rules, that’s for sure,” David said.
“I’m not that bad, am I?” If being the butt of a joke or two helped David get comfortable here, Christine would dance around the room with boxer shorts on her head.
“Get the herbed goat cheese and some pita, Bogart,” Aurora said gruffly. Bogie had already set out four mason jars of iced tea. “So, David, how’d you get kicked out of school anyway?”
“He wasn’t expelled, Aurora. We talked the principal down to a suspension. As long as David keeps his side of the bargain.”
Her son colored, not pleased about being reminded.
“So what kind of hell did you raise?” Aurora asked. “Back talk? Independent thought? Authority figures in institutions hate people who think for themselves.”
“No shit,” he said.
“Language,” Christine warned. “It was for fighting, disrespecting teachers and—other things.” Suspected marijuana possession, which was the part that most worried Christine. He had been using pot, she knew. Stopping was part of their deal.
David had promised to finish his schoolwork online and return in the fall with a new attitude. And Christine would do everything in her power to make that happen, including getting David some counseling. Aurora had told her about a therapist in nearby New Mirage, which was a lucky break in such a minuscule town.
“Christ, kids are kids, Crystal. They’re not all taking Uzis into social studies class.”
“Aurora…” Christine shot her mother a look. They’d discussed this over the phone, since Christine was concerned about her mother’s permissive style and the free-to-be atmosphere at Harmony House.
“Okay,” Aurora said. “Your mother wants me to remind you to obey the rules. There aren’t many, but the ones we have we mean. No fighting. No smarting off…well, maybe a little smarting off. No drugs, of course. A fresh start, right? Pull your weight with chores. We all share and care. That’s our motto. Always has been.”
She nodded at the commune rules posted next to the chore board, where everyone was assigned duties. It looked as though there were only a half-dozen residents at the moment.
“Are we agreed?” Christine said to David. They had to be on the same page if they had any hope of her plan working.
“Chill, okay?” David said. “I got it.”
“We’ll have fun anyway,” Aurora pretended to whisper behind her hand. That was typical Aurora. When she’d visited, she’d let David sip mescal, skip dinner and stay up all night watching vampire movies that gave him nightmares for a week.
David, of course, had adored her.
“Here we go.” Bogie set down a plate of creamy cheese and big triangles of pita bread.
“Sit down, you two,” Aurora said, spreading blobs of the cheese onto the pita, then handing them out. “Eat, Bogie,” she said. “Since the radiation, he hardly eats.”
“I do fine,” he said. “I have…uh…medicine.”
Christine felt a twinge of worry. Bogie grew a few marijuana plants for medicinal use, since pot was good for pain suppression, nausea and poor appetite. He’d promised to never smoke around David and to keep his half-hidden grow-room locked.
In the old days pot had been everywhere at Harmony House, a fact that had annoyed Christine immensely, since it led to so much silly, lazy behavior in the grown-ups.
Christine took a bite of the pita. The cheese was lemony and so delicate it melted like butter on her tongue. “Mmm,” she said, then sipped the rose-hip tea, which tasted fresh and healthy.
David grimaced at the tea and barely nibbled the pita. He was a junk-food maniac, so the grow-your-own meals would be an adjustment for him. She’d take him to Parsons Foods in town for a stash of processed sugar and sodium nitrates. She had enough issues with David. Nutrition could wait.
“You’ll love Doctor Mike, David,” Aurora said. “He’s brilliant. So intuitive. He sees right into you.”
David shrugged, not enthused about the counseling. The guy would have to be good to get through to him.
“If you don’t like him, we’ve got Doctor B.,” Aurora said.
“Doctor B.?” Christine asked.
“Marcus Barnard. He’s a big shrink in LA. He’s working on a book while he’s here.”
So the man in the garden was a psychiatrist. That certainly explained his cool formality and intense gaze, along with his attempt to interpret Aurora’s obstinacy for her.
“He’s a hard worker, too,” Bogie said. “A good thing since we’re low on residents right now. Lucy—she runs the clay works operation—thinks you should hire part-time kids, Crystal.”
“Crystal doesn’t need to mess with any hiring,” Aurora grumbled. “I’ll be back in a week.”
“The heart doctor said six weeks,” Bogie said quietly.
“We’re here to work, Aurora,” Christine said. Bogie had warned her that her mother might resist help.
“You’ll have your hands full with the animals, the gardens and Bogie’s greenhouse,” Aurora said.
“Let’s just see how it goes.” If she had to hog-tie her mother to her bed to make her take it easy, she would. She’d need her A game to manage Aurora, that was clear.
Christine was a pro at finessing difficult clients, but here with her mother in the Harmony House kitchen, she felt herself shrinking into her childhood self, like Alice in Wonderland eating the cake that made her very small.
“If that travel article brings more folks out, we’ll have more hands,” Bogie said.
“There was an article?” Christine asked.
“It was about out-of-the-way travel spots. It said we’re the oldest continuously inhabited commune in the western U.S. We got a couple of hikers from Tucson due to the story.”
“Harmony House is the oldest?” That fact fired up Christine’s professional instincts. “We could market that in ads, up your census, then raise your rates.” It was a relief to talk about something she knew how to do.
“We don’t have rates,” Aurora said. “We ask for a contribution to cover food and laundry services and whatnot.”
“What about your cash flow? Is it predictable?” Christine’s mind was spinning with the key questions she’d ask a client.
“This is a commune,” David said. “It’s about living off what you produce and being sustainable. It’s not about cash.”
Thank you, Brigitte. “Even Harmony House needs income.” She pointed at the Parsons Foods bag on the counter. “I doubt the grocery story lets them barter.”
“They do buy our eggs and goat cheese,” Bogie said.
David made an impatient sound. “Just because your job is getting people to buy crap they don’t need, doesn’t mean the rest of us want to live that way.” He was showing off for Aurora and Bogie, she could tell.
“It was my evil capitalist job that paid for your cell phone, laptop and Xbox,” she said, hoping he would joke back.
“Whatever, Christine.”
She winced. Calling her by her first name was another Brigitte brainstorm: We’re all peers on this planet. But Christine was not about to object at the moment. She had to pick her battles or they’d be in a never-ending war.
“Hell, we all start where we are and do what we can, right, Crystal?” Aurora said, surprising Christine with her kindness. Maybe her mother’s brush with death had softened her a little. “Your boss is cool with you taking off the summer?”
“I’ve brought projects to do from here.” If the commune work tied her up too much, she’d have to dip into savings, but that would be fine. Within a year, she intended to leave Vance Advertising and open her own agency. “The main thing is for you to get your strength back.”
Her mother bristled. “I am not an—”
“Invalid, yeah. That’s what you said.”
“And I mean it,” her mother said sharply. Except the emotion that flashed in her eyes wasn’t anger. It was fear. A chill climbed Christine’s spine. She’d never seen Aurora afraid and it made the world tilt on its axis. Aurora was clearly weaker than she wanted to be. Oh, dear.
“How about we get you settled in now and tomorrow Aurora can show you around the clay works?” Bogie said, evidently trying to smooth the moment.
“That sounds great,” Christine said before her mother could object. “So I’ll stay in my old room and put David in the spare one next door?” Christine and Aurora had lived in the old boarding house owners’ quarters at the back of the building.
“The spare’s got furniture at the moment,” Bogie said. “We could move it if you like.”
“Nonsense,” Aurora said. “David can pick one of the empty rooms on the far end of the second floor. Once you’ve picked it, grab a key.” She nodded at a rack by the kitchen door.
“Okay. Cool.”
He’d be too far away from her, but seeing the delight on David’s face, Christine wouldn’t object.
“We never used to lock a door,” Bogie said, shaking his head sadly. “People insist these days. Your room’s open, Crystal. I figured you’d want to stay there.”
Outside, David barreled up the stairs to pick out his room. Christine grinned at his eagerness. Of course, dragging buckets of table scraps to the compost heap might chill his excitement, not to mention the lack of cell service or high-speed Internet, but Christine hoped he’d be so busy learning and exploring that he’d forget all about Brigitte.
She caught up with him halfway down the terrace, opening doors. When he reached a faded blue one, Christine got a jolt of electric memory. That was Dylan’s room, where she’d lost her virginity not exactly on purpose.
“Not that one!” she called, then saw that David had opened the door to Marcus Barnard, who was buttoning up a blue shirt.
“Sorry,” David said, the moved on to the next room.
“He didn’t realize the room was occupied,” she said, watching Marcus’s fingers on the buttons. His ring finger had a pale indentation. He was divorced or widowed and not long ago. Hmmm.
“No problem,” he said, tucking in his shirt. “I’ll get the dolly.” Before she could object, he was loping down the terrace.
“Thanks!” she called as he took the stairs down to the yard. Leaning on the terrace rail, she watched him cross to the clay barn, moving with the easy grace of an athlete, strong, but not showy about it. Easy on the eyes. Maybe she shouldn’t stare, but, heck, window-shopping didn’t cost a dime, did it?
CHAPTER TWO
