Chapter 5 That's Enough. Let's Eat

Emma's face went scarlet. She stamped her foot against the tile. "Why should I apologize? I didn't do anything wrong!"

"Emma Grayson. " Asher crossed the room in three strides, crouched down until he was level with her eyes and spoke one word at a time. "You will apologize to Eleanor. Right now."

"No!She's not my mom!" Emma's finger shot out toward Eleanor, her eyes filling. "Why do I have to apologize to her? My real mom is back now. She's the one who should leave!"

Emma spun around and ran for the stairs, and at her bedroom door she turned back, her voice cracking. "I only have one mom and it isn't her! It will never be her!"

The door slammed. The living room went silent.

Eleanor stood where she was. Her face was composed in the way that costs something, her eyes faintly red, her mouth pressed into a flat line.

Asher came back to her. "I'm sorry. I'll deal with her."

"It's all right." Eleanor looked down. "She isn't entirely wrong."

"Eleanor—"

"I'm fine." She lifted her head and produced a small smile. "Asher. Regina, coming here. Tell me what's going on."

He was quiet for a second. "She's back for good. She says she misses Emma and wants to see her. I told her she could come for dinner tomorrow, with her family."

"With her family," Eleanor repeated.

"Regina is Emma's biological mother, and the Sterlings are Emma's family too," Asher said, as if patience made the decision reasonable. "They miss her. We have no right to keep them from seeing each other. Isn't that so?After the product launch I'll take you and Emma away for a few days, just the three of us. How about that?"

He brushed his thumb across Eleanor's brow and kissed her forehead. "Don't overthink it."

Eleanor gave him a small nod, but a dull sadness remained. Emma's family had come back. Where did that leave the woman who had raised her?

At five o'clock the next afternoon, the doorbell rang.

Regina came in on four-inch heels, a camel cashmere coat over her shoulders and a bag worth more than most people's cars on her arm, with the unhurried ease of a woman who had spent eight years being admired in Paris. Her mother, Victoria Sterling, followed her in, dressed with the same precision.

"Emma!" Regina opened her arms, and Emma was already flying down the stairs. "Mom!"

Something turned over in Eleanor's chest. Emma used to run at her exactly like that.

Regina looked at Eleanor over her daughter's shoulder, her eyes traveling up and then down again, and the corner of her mouth curved. "Eleanor. It's been a while."

They settled in the living room. Emma stuck to Regina's side and talked without stopping. Victoria sat with her tea and let her gaze move slowly around the room, taking inventory of everything that fell short.

After a while Emma looked over and waved her hand with that familiar entitlement. "Go make dinner. My mom's here, so make it good. I want the seafood pasta, and no tomatoes in my mom's."

Eleanor looked at her calmly and didn't move. "Mrs. Henderson is already making dinner."

Emma frowned, but Regina got in first, easy and unhurried. "Wait. You cook? For the family? Regularly?"

She smiled. "Asher never once let me near a kitchen when we were together.He always said I shouldn't have to worry about that kind of thing. He wouldn't even let me pour myself a glass of water. Seems he's learned to let someone else serve him these days.I just didn't expect it to be the woman he married. I assumed he would hire someone."

The words weren't loud and they weren't sharp, but they lodged somewhere Eleanor couldn't reach, like a fish bone caught in her throat.

Emma jumped in at once. "Obviously. My mom's a real artist. She doesn't do that stuff."

She turned to Eleanor, her voice edged with contempt. "All you do is clean up and go and teach piano to other people's kids. Dad's rich. Don't you think it's embarrassing, sitting in strangers' living rooms for money like that?"

Victoria set down her cup. "Now that Asher is a man of standing,his wife's image reflects on him. When he's out there doing business, and someone asks what his wife does, he can't very well say she teaches children piano in other people's homes. If word gets around, it won't do anyone any good. Worth keeping in mind."

One after another the three of them lectured her from on high, each taking a turn.

Before Eleanor could say a word, Mrs. Henderson, standing by the doorway, could not hold it in any longer. "Mrs. Grayson runs this household from top to bottom. Every meal, appointment, school matter, and family obligation is handled because she remembers it. This home would not function without her. As a wife, she is more than qualified."

"Nobody asked you!" Emma snapped. "You're the housekeeper, so do your own job and stop interrupting the family."

Regina smiled faintly and said nothing, and the smile was its own kind of sentence.

Eleanor took a slow breath and fixed her eyes on Emma, and when her voice came out it was steady.

"Emma. Your school, your tutors, the etiquette classes we enrolled you in. We put all of that into you so you would grow up with some grace. What you just said to Mrs. Henderson was rude, and it stops now."

Emma shot to her feet, red to the ears. "You have no right to lecture me!"

"Emma. Sit down." Regina's voice was light, almost lazy. "Manners."

Then she tilted her head. "Although, Eleanor. You were disciplining my daughter. Shouldn't you run that by me first?"

Eleanor turned to face her.

"Regina. You're standing in Asher Grayson's house. I am the lady of it. Under my own roof I will tell anyone at all what basic respect looks like."

Three full seconds of silence. Something shifted behind Regina's expression, and the practiced smile developed a hairline crack.

Then the front door opened.

Asher stood in the entryway. He had heard the last of it from the driveway. His eyes swept the room, Victoria on the sofa, Emma on her feet, Mrs. Henderson pale by the wall, and came to rest on Eleanor's face.

Eleanor's heart lurched.

Regina turned to him without hurry. "Asher, you're just in time. Your wife has been lecturing Emma in front of my mother. And when I tried to say one word on my own daughter's behalf, she used her status as the lady of this house to put me in my place."

She glanced at Eleanor, and her voice softened into something delicate and aggrieved. "Her roof. Asher, I came here today because I missed Emma. I only wanted to see Emma. I didn't come here to be humiliated in front of my own mother and my own child. Maybe I should just go, and leave her to play the lady of the house in peace."

By the time Regina finished, something in Asher's expression had changed.

Regina made as if to pick up her bag and leave. Emma caught her hand at once and held on tight. "Mom, don't go!" Then she turned to Asher. "Dad, please, don't let her go. I've waited so long for her to come back."

Asher's gaze came to rest on Eleanor, and it was not the look he usually gave her. It was cooler. Measuring.

"Eleanor," he said. "Regina is a guest in this house. She is Emma's mother. There is no need for any of this."

Eleanor opened her mouth. She wanted to say, Asher, I didn't—they were the ones who—but before the words could take shape, he cut her off.

"Be generous about it. There's no need to make everyone unhappy over something this small. Let it go." His voice wasn't loud, and it could even be called gentle, but that gentleness landed in Eleanor's ears sharper than any reprimand.

Eleanor felt the floor tilt under her. She looked at him, at the man she had loved for eight years, standing in front of her now with a look in his eyes she had never seen before. And just moments ago, at that very dining table, all she had done was teach Emma what basic respect meant. She had done nothing wrong. Yet in his eyes, she had already become someone who needed to be reminded to "be generous."

Then Asher turned to Regina, almost coaxing. "Eleanor isn't unwelcoming to you. Come and eat."

It was the tone he used to soothe someone he believed had been wronged. Just now, those three—mother, daughter, and grandmother—had mocked and provoked her, and now the one who had been "wronged" had become Regina.

Regina finally let a satisfied smile show.

Eleanor stood there, her mouth half open, the words still caught in her throat.

She watched Asher turn slightly, his arm gesturing faintly toward Regina, leading her toward the dining room.

Her chest felt pressed down by something, so tight she could barely breathe.

She just stood there, watching their backs, watching Regina's heels cross the floor she mopped every day, watching Emma skip along beside them, watching Victoria unhurriedly gather her teacup and rise.

The whole room was moving forward.

Only she was left behind.