I grabbed the phone so fast I almost knocked over the glass of water beside it.
“Sav?” I answered, already half-smiling. “Hey. I know it’s been a couple days, but I’m actually okay, I just—”
“Adelaide, where the hell have you been?”
The sharpness in her voice made me pause. I had expected relief, maybe even elation, not … this.
“I—”
“Mom said you haven’t called her in over a month,” Savannah continued, her tone already sliding into the familiar clipped rhythm conveying she’d decided I was wrong about something before the conversation had even started. “Do you have any idea how selfish that is?”
My smile faded slowly. “Oh.”
“Our mother is alone in England and you can’t even pick up the phone? What exactly are you doing with your life that you’re so busy you can’t call your own mother?”
I blinked at the wall across from me, stunned.
She. Is. Not. Alone.
Somewhere outside, waves crashed against the cliffs below the villa, the steady roar of the ocean filling the silence suddenly stretching between Savannah’s accusations.
“I thought you were calling because you were worried,” I said finally.
“Worried about what?”
I frowned. “Well … I haven’t exactly been reachable.”
Savannah scoffed. “You’ve always been bad at answering your phone, Addy. That’s not new.”
Something small and sharp twisted in my chest. If I would have imagined this moment, I definitely would have imagined it differently.
There would have been concern, a myriad of questions, and maybe even a little panic.
Not … whatever this was.
I cleared my throat and blinked rapidly. “I’ve been … busy.”
Savannah huffed on the other end of the line.
“Busy doing what? You quit the one steady job you had months ago, the bakery is gone, and unless you’ve suddenly developed a secret career you forgot to mention, I can’t imagine your schedule is that demanding.”
The words landed with the same dull, familiar thud they always had.
As far as Savannah was concerned, I was not ambitious enough, not driven enough, not focussed enough. I wasn’t good enough and yet I somehow still managed to be too much.
My fingers tightened slightly around the phone. “That’s not really fair.”
“Oh please.” She scoffed. “You’ve always drifted from thing to thing. Mom was asking about you and I had to tell her I had no idea what you were doing because you switch jobs so fast, no one can actually keep up.”
I stared out at the water, watching the sun glitter across the surface like shards of glass.
“She didn’t call me either,” I said quietly.
Savannah paused. “That’s not the point.”
“Isn’t it?”
“She’s your mother, Adelaide.”