Chase chewed on her lip and thought about that. “Sometimes. I think she got caught up in the life. It’s easy to do. She’s competitive, and she grew up kind of poor and bucked her parents to come out to LA to make it big. She was the Little Miss Georgia Peach Queen and could tap-dance, after all.” Chase laughed at the thought that that was all one needed to make her own breaks. If only.

Olivia’s mouth twitched.

“But I think she did what she could to survive, including sticking me in the business.”

“Do you think she loves you?”

Chase pressed a hand to her stomach. Did her mother love her? She’d spent so much time being angry at her mother for pushing her, she’d never really thought much about Lorna as a person. If Chase were a mother, would she have pushed her daughter into fame, fortune, and eventually an appalling public unraveling that was displayed on E! and every gossip rag? Chase didn’t think she would, because now she understood what that kind of life could do to an innocent. Lorna hadn’t known. She’d just wanted to stop sweating rent every month or worrying about how to pay for Chase’s braces. “I don’t know.”

The cabin appeared in the break, the shutter still hanging loose, the swing still drunk on its uneven chains, but the rocking chairs were new, and the screen door was repaired. The place looked how Chase felt—a little off, a little neglected, but better every day.

“What are you going to do about Neve?” Chase asked Olivia, noting how pretty Olivia looked in the glow of the moon.

Olivia issued a big sigh. “I guess I don’t know, either.”

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

A week later

Chase clicked the top of her pen and closed the workbook. She’d just finished the latest chapter and felt the need to talk to her mother for the first time in forever. Which was weird, but examining her thoughts, feelings, values, and boundaries with a sincere effort had allowed her to see her life from several different directions. Not to mention, Olivia’s questions about her mother, about who her mother was and why and how she raised Chase the way she did, had made Chase realize she had never seen Lorna outside of the box she’d put her in.

Oh, Lorna had her faults. Her mother had made mistakes. But so had Chase.

A lot of them.