Page 142 of The Wallflower Takes All

“Mama—”

“No, darling. Let me say it.”

The plea silenced Poppy.

Lady Viva folded her hands together. Without the glass, she seemed uncertain what to do with them.

“I thought if I married Bellarosa, you would be free. He said he had estates. A title. Villas. Or perhaps one villa. The number altered, but that seemed unimportant at the time. I thought I could go away with him. You could too if you wished. You would not need to provide for me. You could marry someone you love, or refuse to marry altogether, or take a cottage and fill it with books and dogs and not one single dying poet unless you invited him yourself.”

Her mouth trembled.

Poppy took one small step toward her, then stopped, the ache in her chest too large for speech.

Mama’s voice dropped to something almost inaudible. “I thought I could do one useful thing for you.”

The anger inside Poppy did not vanish. It became more complicated. “Mama,” she said, gentler now, “you cannot save me by handing yourself to a stranger.”

“I was trying.”

“I know.”

“I do try, sometimes.” Lady Viva looked toward the window, though she did not seem to see the street below. “I know it does not appear so.”

Poppy crossed the room slowly. “Mama.”

Lady Viva’s face tightened. Then, impossibly, tears filled her eyes.

Poppy stopped. She had never seen her mother cry. Not when Papa died. Not at the funeral. Not in the terrible weeks afterward, when people filled the house with flowers and lowered voices. Lady Viva had laughed too loudly, invited more guests, poured more wine. She had turned grief into motion and refused to stand still long enough for anyone to name it.

Now a tear slipped down her cheek.

Mama brushed it away with an impatient movement. “I miss him,” she whispered.

Poppy’s throat closed.

Lady Viva shook her head once. “I miss him every day. It is silly. Ten years, and I still wake expecting him to be there. I still think of something dreadful or funny and turn to tell him. And he is not there, Poppy. He is never there.”

Another tear followed the first. Then another.

Mama pressed one hand to her mouth, but the sob escaped. Small at first. Startled. A sound she had carried so long she no longer recognized it.

Poppy reached for her. Mama folded against her with a broken sound.

For one breathless moment, Poppy became thirteen again. Frightened, bewildered, longing for the mother who had vanished into laughter and wine when Papa disappeared.

Then she wrapped both arms around Lady Viva and held her.

Mama wept. It wasn’t pretty or theatrical. Her body shook with ten years of grief she had outrun until there was nowhere left to go. Poppy stroked her hair and murmured the same gentle nonsense Mama had once offered whenever Poppy woke from a bad dream.

“It is all right.”

It was not. But perhaps someday it would be.

“Let it out.”

Mama clutched at the back of Poppy’s gown. “I loved him.”

“I know.”