The Game Changer (19 page)

“I was watching for you at the window, and saw you get off the bus a few minutes ago.” Rita held out her arms, and Melody stepped into them, breathing in her mother’s familiar scent of peaches and vanilla. She had smelled like that for as long as Melody could remember, and whenever she caught a similar scent, she was transported back in time to her childhood.

“You look great, Mom,” Melody commented, giving her mother a squeeze before releasing her.

“Thank you honey, so do you.” Rita looked Melody over the way she always did, taking in her clothes and hair and jewelry. “Really great. There’s something different about you. I think being single agrees with you.”

Melody laughed. “I think it does, too, actually. In more ways than one.”

Movement over her mother’s shoulder caught Melody’s eye, and she shifted to see Ava standing outside the kitchen door. Rita followed Melody’s gaze, then moved to stand next to her granddaughter, her hand resting lightly on her shoulder.

“Look who’s here, sweetheart,” Rita said, smiling warmly at the little girl.

Melody realized she’d have to stop thinking of her niece as a little girl. She had seen a handful of pictures of her over the years, but in her mind’s eye she still pictured Ava as the chubby, bright-eyed toddler she’d been when she last saw her. Now she was tall and slender, with long hair the same chestnut shade as Melody’s. Her porcelain skin made her look delicate, but her still-bright eyes were wary, and gave away a hint of the things she had witnessed in her short life.

“Hi Ava,” Melody said. She had the sudden urge to rush forward and embrace the girl, but she resisted it. She didn’t want to frighten or overwhelm her.

“Hello,” Ava said, clasping her hands in front of her and twisting her fingers nervously.

Melody realized she was holding her breath, waiting. When Ava gave her a small, shy smile, Melody sighed quietly in relief, and smiled in return. She stepped forward, hesitant, but when she held out her arms, Ava moved forward instantly and hugged her tightly.

Tears built behind her eyes, and despite her best effort to stop them from spilling over her lids, they did. She wiped at them hastily, and Ava pulled back, regarding her with concern.

“Sorry,” Melody said quickly. “I’m just so happy to see you.” She had worried about Ava being overwhelmed, but now she was the one who felt an onslaught of emotions.

“It’s okay,” Ava said, stepping back and looking up at her. Her brows drew together slightly as she examined Melody with those keen hazel eyes of hers. “You don’t look like Jackie.”

Taken aback, Melody simply blinked at her in surprise.
Jackie
, she thought. Not Mom or Mother, but Jackie. “No, I don’t. I’m sort of a mixture of our parents, and Jackie looked like our grandfather.”

Ava nodded as if that made perfect sense. “I think I kinda look like you.”

For some reason, Ava’s statement made Melody ridiculously pleased. “Yeah, you kind of do,” she agreed. “Me and your grandmother.”

“Nana,” Ava said, looking at Rita with another small smile, then back to Melody. “She said I could call her Rita if I wanted. Or Grandma or Nanny or whatever. But Nana kinda seemed to fit her, I think.”

Melody thought her mother looked as pleased with that as she had with Ava’s realization that she looked like Melody. “Nana does fit,” she agreed.

“And I guess I should call you Aunt Melody,” Ava said solemnly.

“You don’t have to,” Melody told her quickly. “If you don’t feel comfortable. You can just call me Melody or Mel. Whatever you want.”

“Nana said you’d say that.” Ava looked to Rita for confirmation.

“Ava called me Rita for awhile before she settled on Nana,” Rita told Melody, running her hand over Ava’s head and down her hair soothingly. “Dr. McGregor said we should encourage her to do things at her own pace.”

“Right, of course, so you just call me whatever you want,” Melody said, smiling reassuringly at her niece.

Ava nodded her head slowly, still looking solemn.

“Why don’t you show Melody what we did to her old bedroom while I check on dinner,” Rita suggested.

Melody was surprised her mother was encouraging them to spend time alone together so soon. She knew it was inevitable, but she thought that after not being allowed to see Ava for weeks, her mother would try to keep the young girl close.

Ava reached out as if she were going to take Melody’s hand, but then crossed her arms around herself protectively instead. She met Melody’s eyes briefly before heading down the hall, and Melody followed silently.

The apartment wasn’t all that big. Rita and Melody had moved there when Melody was fourteen, after her father died. Jackie had already left home to live with her boyfriend, so it was just the two of them, and they didn’t need a big place. The apartment had a decent-sized kitchen, large living room and dining room, one bathroom, and two spacious bedrooms.

When Rita had decided it was time to move, she and Melody looked at houses, townhouses, and condos, but nothing had really interested them. This apartment had been their last stop, and they’d both loved it immediately. It wasn’t big and it wasn’t fancy, but it suited their needs, and they’d been happy there.

Melody always assumed her mother would find another place to live when she moved out, but Rita said it was home, and there was nowhere else she’d rather be.

Despite the fact that Melody hadn’t lived here in ten years, it still felt like home as she followed Ava past the bathroom and Rita’s bedroom to the end of the hall where her old room was. She had taken all the furniture except her single bed when she’d moved, and Rita had turned the room into an office/guest room.

Ava pushed the door open and stepped inside. She had that wary look in her eyes again as she turned to face Melody, her gaze penetrating as she searched Melody’s face for—Melody wasn’t sure what. Recognition? Approval? Something more? Or perhaps something less, and Melody was simply reading too much into it.

She cast her eyes around the room, barely recognizing it. When she was a teenager her mother hadn’t wanted her to paint, but she’d made up for it by allowing her to plaster the walls with posters and pictures. She’d had one entire wall dedicated to a photo collage, mostly pictures of herself and Olivia through the years, with a few of her family thrown in.

The rest of the walls had been dedicated to posters of U2, a few movie posters, various postcards her father had collected in his youth, and several framed prints of King Arthur and Guinivere. It had been an eclectic mish-mash of things, and nothing really matched, but it was her space and she loved it.

Now the walls were painted a pale shade of purple, and were adorned with framed paintings of castles with rolling green hills behind them and horses dotting the fields. Melody recognized her old prints of King Arthur and Guinevere, and even as she smiled to herself she wondered at a young girl being interested in such things.

She noticed her old bed, her warn blue comforter gone now and replaced with a fluffy new one in varying shades of purple. There were dolls and stuffed animals lined up precisely against decorative pillows, all of which looked brand new. There was also a new rocking chair in one corner, a small desk with a chair in the other corner, and a wide bookcase filled with books.

It was a completely different room, but it felt the same somehow. It still felt like home. Melody had the sudden urge to pick a book from the shelf and curl up on her old bed against the soft-looking cushions. She wondered if Ava felt the same way. The room was so pretty and feminine, but it seemed like an odd mixture of childish and mature, a time warp of sorts that hinted at a girl who was stuck between childhood and adolescence, unsure of which way to go.

“This is really great,” Melody said, realizing that Ava was watching her expectantly. “So different from when this was my room.”

“Are you upset that I changed it so much?”

Melody hated the worry in Ava’s voice. She wondered, as she had many times before, what her sister had put this child through over the last ten years. “Not at all,” Melody assured her. “I love it. Did Mo—Nana pick these paintings out?”

Ava shook her head. “I did. I love medieval stuff.”

Melody looked at her in surprise. “Really? You seem so young to be interested in history.”

Ava shrugged and walked over to the bookcase. She ran her fingers along the spine of a row of hardcover books, a ghost of a smile playing around her lips. “I love to read,” she explained, not looking at Melody. “My teachers put me into a special reading program at school.” She finally turned her gaze to Melody, and she looked proud. “Jackie never let me have books. She said reading was stupid and a waste of time, but I didn’t care what she said. I loved it. I got books from the library, and I won books as part of the reading program at school. I had to hide them in my room so Jackie wouldn’t find them, but she was hardly ever home, so I spent a lot of time reading.”

Melody’s throat and chest tightened as she listened to her niece speak. She could feel tears threatening once again, but there was also an anger simmering deep inside her. Anger at her sister for the neglect she inflicted on this innocent girl. Before she could speak, Ava continued.

“I like fantasy best,” she said softly, her eyes distant. “Getting to escape to other worlds. Pretend I’m someone else, somewhere else.” She glanced over her shoulder at the painted castles, and that almost-smile flitted around her lips again. She blinked as if coming out of a trance, and her bleary eyes focused on Melody. “Nana bought me all these books. She says I can have as many books as I want now.”

Melody cleared her throat, desperately trying to collect herself. “I live right above the best bookstore in town,” she said, amazed at the steadiness of her voice. “Maybe you and I can go book shopping someday when you come for a visit.”

Ava’s eyes lit up, but dimmed again almost immediately. “You don’t have to do that,” she said, turning away and climbing onto the bed. She plucked one of stuffed animals from the group, a penguin with a long red scarf, and held it close to her chest.

“I want to,” Melody said, perching at the edge of the bed. “I think it would be fun. I know the owner of the store, so he could order anything you wanted that they didn’t have in stock.”

“I just don’t want you to make promises you can’t keep,” Ava said.

Melody was so shocked she couldn’t respond immediately. Before she could open her mouth to assure Ava she would always keep her promises, Rita appeared at the door.

“Dinner’s ready,” she sang happily. Unaware of the tension, Rita looked pleased to see the two of them sitting together on the bed, talking.

“I’m starving.” Ava dropped the penguin and hopped off the bed, bounding out of the room without a backward glance.

“How’d it go?” Rita asked.

What could Melody say? It had been going great until she’d offered to take Ava to the bookstore—something she thought her niece would love. What had she done wrong? Her mother still looked so pleased, though, and Melody didn’t want her to worry. “It went really well,” she said. “I think we’re going to get along great.”

“Wonderful!” Rita clasped her hands together, as if sending up a prayer of thanks to some higher being. “I knew you would. Come on then, let’s eat.”

Rita disappeared down the hall, and Melody stood slowly from the bed, straightening the pillows and animals she had knocked over when she sat down. When she picked up the penguin Ava had been holding, her fingers brushed against something hard tucked under the pillow. She lifted the pillow and found a hardcover edition of
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone
hidden underneath.

“Guess old habits die hard,” she muttered to herself, shaking her head sadly. She replaced the book under the pillow and turned off the light as she left the room.

CHAPTER 11

“She actually said that? ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep’?”

It was almost midnight, and Olivia had just arrived home from a date with Cameron. Melody stayed at her mother’s until nine o’clock, when it was time for Ava to go to bed. The rest of the night had gone well, and Ava even hugged and kissed her goodnight, but Melody couldn’t get the image out of her mind of Ava’s eyes alighting then fading when she mentioned taking her to the bookstore. She had thought of bringing the subject up to her mother once Ava was in bed, but Rita had still looked so pleased, Melody didn’t have the heart to ruin that.

Melody vented to Olivia instead. The minute Olivia walked through the front door and saw Melody on the couch, she wanted the details of her night, and so Melody filled her in from beginning to end.