Chapter 10

Nine Days before Christmas...

Dazed, Lily sat in her Aunt's car. Snowflakes swirled against the glass as she waited for help to come. She watched them dancing, carefree like the fireflies of summer. The only reason her hands weren't shaking was because she was gripping the steering wheel so tightly her knuckles were white.

Her self-loathing shouted at her. 'You couldn't even make it back from the clinic with Ava! You're a drug addict just like Belinda!'

She was on the way home from Ava's pediatrician appointment. The baby was cooing happily in the back, but Lily was sure she almost killed them. She was turning into her mother, taking her child out when she was too stoned to drive.

Someone tapped on her window. It was the Deputy Constable that Lily knew but she couldn't think of his name. John introduced him as his cousin to Lily only a ten days ago.

"Ms. Johansen? Ma'am, are you alright? How did you end up here?"

"I... I h-had t-to take Ava t-to the d-doctor today," was all she could stammer out.

Her hands hurt as they clutched the wheel. She wanted to scream at herself in rage as her internal litany of self-deprecation chanted, 'Tell him you're trying to kill yourself and your baby. You! Failed! Like you fail at everything.'

"Slide out," the constable said with deep concern, "I'll drive you home."

That seemed to bring Lily back to herself. "No... Ummm, I've got it. I'm fine. I just have to get back on the road. I called a tow truck."

She looked paler than she had when they first met, so he asked, "Are you sure you're okay being out so soon after your surgery?"

"I'm just very tired. Ava doesn't sleep very much," Lily insisted, but she wondered if he could tell she was still slightly stoned. Her muddled mind finally came up with some information she could use. His name was Jamie, he was John Micheals's cousin. Aunt Evie told her he moved to Oconto after his divorce. "Really, I'm fine, Jamie."

She looked up at him, ​his soft blue eyes reminded her of the sky over the ocean in summer. They were so worried and concerned. It was an expression she had never seen in Ian's eyes, but then she reminded herself she and Ian had never had a difficult moment or even a fight their entire marriage.

"Please Ms. Johansen, let me take you home. You're obviously not used to driving on ice."

"I grew up h-here," Stammering, she wondered why he was being so nice, she didn't deserve it.

"And you've been gone for years." His large hands were warm and gentle as he pried her fingers off the wheel. He eased her out and got Ava. Her footing kept slipping as he guided her back to his patrol vehicle, sitting her in the passenger seat, then he put Ava in her carseat between them.

"Okay, let's get you home. We can get your car home later." He pulled a tissue out of the center console and handed it to her for her running nose. "Is Ava going to be okay?" He appraised her, noting the glassy redness of her eyes, wondering if it was more than exhaustion and emotions that made them look that way.

She wiped her stress tears and blew her nose on the tissue. "I, um... yes. Ava caught something called Viral Rosacea. She's been sick for a few days, and I didn't know. I thought she was just being fussy. We haven't slept."

Her mind struggled to find something else to think about, anything else besides her incompetence as a mother but she couldn't. He drove easily, turning onto Harbor Road as if it wasn't a sheet of ice.

"A lot of kids get Rosacea their first snow fall. Babies are especially susceptible. Adults get it and don't realize it. They give it to the littles. Most folks who aren't from here don't know about it, don't you know." He talked about oatmeal baths for the itching and it was almost soothing to listen to his deep voice. He slowed to turn off Old Lake Road. "Kathy just let the twins lay around in their diapers until they got over it."

Lily nodded her head as Jamie parked in front of the Tiger Lily Inn. "Thanks for the ride, I'll get my aunt's car towed back here." The streets seemed more snow-packed and icy than when she went to the clinic.

"Miss Lily, I know you lived here before but that was years ago. Do you want... I mean, I could give you a refresher on how to drive better on the ice in your aunt's old rear-wheel-drive car," Jamie offered as he stopped. "Maybe you should look for something that is all-wheel or front wheel drive?"

"I'll have to find something I can afford," interrupting, Lily huffed, thinking about her savings. She did not want to touch the proceeds from selling her SUV to buy a used car. She needed the money to take care of Ava. "I'll... I'll just have to manage until spring. Thank you for the ride, Constable Micheals." Getting out, she slammed the door before he could respond, then she hurried inside the Tiger Lily Inn.

"Ooftah, she's a moody one," Jamie muttered as he turned his patrol vehicle around.

<<@>>

Inside, Lily found her aunt watching out the window as the Oconto Constables vehicle pulled away from the Inn.

Evelynn said softly with an amused chuckled. "Well, at least the town gossips will have something to talk about besides your arrival... How nice of young Jamie to chauffeur you home. John already called to say he will tow my car home after checking the alignment."

"How much will that cost me?" Lily asked, not because she cared but she didn't want to talk about the chivalrous constable. "Aunt Evie, why do you live here on the edge of hell froze over?" Lily demanded changing the subject. "The roads are terrible."

"Where else would I live, I've been here so long? When Mama moved us here to run her grandmother's Inn, I was barely eighteen." She sighed with a nostalgic smile. "I was a willful girl, tall, thin, and tomboyish, different than most in my generation, so I left for California. I loved my first girlfriend blindly. We moved a lot; she was always looking for a place to accept us and a modeling contract. She left me for Paris, and by then my mother was ready to retire from running the Tiger Lily Inn. She was sick. When she died, Grace and I had to borrow the money to pay the probate taxes."

"How did she die?" Lily asked. They were alone in the B&B until two days after Christmas.

"Bad lungs, emphysema and COPD is what they call it now. Eloise was a lifelong smoker so it might have been cancer too." Evelynn sighed in a very tired, old person kind of way before she continued. "Grief does strange things to folks. Your grandmother Grace moved with her husband and their child to Orlando to run a motel. I stayed here and ran the Tiger Lily Inn. Years later, Grace and her husband died in an accident, Afterward, your mother, who was spoiled outrageously, came out to meet me, but I could tell there was nothing good in her. She pretended to show me kindness then asked for money, demanding half the value of the Tiger Lily. She never let anyone stand between her and her wants. It's why she chased your dad to Salt Lake. Unlike you, she never even tried to recover from her addictions... Don't let what Ian did make you bitter or push you down your mother's path. You're better than that, Lily. I know you are."

Realization that her aunt knew caused Lily to start crying. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I just... just don't want to hurt. I'm so useless." She pushed Ava into Evelynn's arms. "She deserves better than a depressed pothead for a mother."

Trying to give the baby back, Evelynn insisted, "She deserves a mother who knows how to love and cherish her because she wasn't loved and cherished by her mother, and that my sweet girl, is you. I know you get sad. I know you struggle, but you know how to love more deeply than any one I have ever met... That's why losing people hurts you so much."

Her biological mother's own hostility toward her poured out in her words. "No. I'm useless. A failure. My mom wished I was never born. It's... It's the only thing I remember her saying to me."

"It isn't true. Your mother was a spoiled, entitled addict who reaped what she sowed, Lily. I've seen that a lot of things always come back around like the seasons. Bitterness and revenge beget a harvest that you might not expect and always hurts someone who doesn't deserve it. Are you prepared to reap what you sow or have Ava reap your harvest?" Evelynn reprimanded as she stood. "Don't be like Belinda; you will be like her if you keep going down this path."

"I would never hurt Ava... I will never allow her to suffer what I did," Lily snapped in offense.

"Then stop being bitter about things, stop running away by putting my cannabis leaves in your coffee and cocoa... And stop drinking so much of the tea... it's medicinal, not a crutch. You don't want to end up like Belinda."

Lily bit the inside of her cheek as they stood in silence.

"I think you should think about my offer. You need something to do besides sit in your rooms and mope." Evelynn walked around the desk to answer the phone.

Before Lily responded, her aunt said, "Happy Holidays, Tiger Lily Inn," into the phone. Evelynn looked at her laptop and began typing. "Thank you, I'll take care of it."

Climbing the stairs slowly, Lily didn't know what she wanted any more. She thought she had everything, including love, but the one she loved didn't love her. Her mother's hateful words haunted her.

"You were just a way to keep your father home and he still left. You're worthless. I wish you had never been born."

Lily didn't want Ava to ever feel the way she did, like someone to be used and discarded. Lying down on her bed with Ava, Lily curled around her daughter. Exhaustion caught up with her.

<<@>>

Andrew Hastings got off the plane in Anchorage and headed for the place Lily's sister was delivering a semitruck full of groceries to. Ian recognized Kitty Johansen immediately as she pulled into the distribution warehouse yard. The resemblance was unnerving.

He paid the Uber driver to wait, "Stay here. This is where my brother's sister-in-law works. I just need to ask her a question; it should only take a few minutes."

Going to the gate, he waited for the security guard to tell Kitty she had a visitor. Kitty came out wearing only a parka vest and beanie, despite the bitter cold of the Alaskan winter. She hesitated when she saw him, then walked up to him.

"What do you want?"

He endured her withering glare. "You know who I am?"

"You're the arse-hole brother. I saw your picture on Lily's phone before I threw it in the trash."

Andrew held out a photograph of Jezebel hanging from a stripper pole, he needed to confirm which sister it was. "Is this your sister?"

Kitty looked at the picture, "Yes."

She started to hand it back then stopped when he demanded, "So Lily was a stripper too before she met my brother?"

"No, this is Jessica, you idiot. Our half-sister from another mother. Lily has never worked as a dancer." She waved the picture in his face. "Is this why Ian left my sister? Divorced her the day after she and Ava almost died? Someone gave him an old picture of Jessica?" Her fists clenched, crushing it, and she threw the wadded-up paper at his chest. "Your brother does not deserve my sister if he can't tell her from our half-sister."

"They look the same," he argued. "Like twins."

"They do not!" Kitty shouted at him as the security guard stepped out the gate kiosk.

"Please, calm down... I'm sorry I made her sign those papers in the hospital. The P.I. who was doing the background check... He was a hack who confused them."

"Confused them? You're lying! They don't even have the same name or birthday."

"They have the same initials and were born the same month..."

"A year apart!"

"Look, I need to find Lily. Ian... Ian wants to apologize. We want to make things right."

Kitty punched him hard enough to put him on his back in the snow. "Go to hell, Hastings and take your brother with you. You can never fix what he did; he broke her heart." She stomped away, snarling at the security guard, "Max, if you ever see him again after today, shoot him, and I promise I'll marry you after we bury the body."

The large Inuit man looked Andrew up and down. "Please come back tomorrow so I can shoot you, I've been asking Kitty for a date for a year."

She went inside and slammed the door as she texted her sisters and aunt in their group chat after reading the messages from Julie and Leonard.

Sorry, Lily. I broke my promise and I hope I broke Andrew Hastings' jaw. He showed up at the depot in Alaska and I punched him.

She flexed her hand as she added, He claims the Hastings thought Lily and Jess were the same person. What a load of crap!