Page 66 of Cross + Catherine: The Companion

Eventually.

Cece heard what her mother didn’t say.

“I know, Ma,” Cece said.

Catherine looked back out the window. “Good.”

“Isn’t that strange, though?”

“Hmm?”

“That you miss when I was little, and you could take me everywhere. But now you kind of wish that I would slow down. That’s what you mean, right?”

Catherine’s smile was soft as she looked back at her daughter. “Yeah, that’s what I mean.”

“So is it—strange?”

“Normal, I think. All things considered.”

Cece smiled, too. “You know, Ma, if you asked me to choose any other normal thing, or the chance to be with you … I would pick you.”

“You would, huh?”

“Always. You’re my ma.”

Catherine was quiet for a long time, but her gaze never drifted away from Cece for even a second. She could tell her mother was trying to find something when she looked at her—something that wasn’t clearly visible, but had to be there, nonetheless.

It was not the first time her mother did something like that. Sometimes, when Cece was hiding a secret, it was like her mother just knew she was holding something back simply by looking at her.

“What?” Cece asked.

Catherine shook her hear. “I was just thinking that years ago, this could have been me and your grandmamma. Different circumstances, though. Entirely different.”

Oh.

Now she was really curious.

Her mother and grandmother didn’t talk a lot about how exactly Catherine had come into the business with Catrina. Cece always just assumed it was like her and her ma—she grew up in it all, saw the business happening around her, and naturally, gravitated toward the same path because this was what she was meant for.

Was it the same for her ma?

Cece leaned forward a bit in the seat, unable to hide her curiosity. “Why is it different?”

Catherine waved a hand between them. “When I was your age, I used to have to snoop through my mother’s office and things just to find out any little detail about her life beyond the woman who ran our household. She was my mother—my father’s wife. She was the woman who tucked me into bed, and read me stories.”

“But?”

“But I also knew that wasn’t the end of her tale. I knew she was more—something else entirely when she left our home for weeks at a time. But whenever I would ask, she shot me down. She didn’t want me to know what she was doing, or who she was.”

Cece frowned. “But why?”

That didn’t sound like her grandmamma at all.

“I guess because my mother wanted to be one thing to me, Cece. Just my mother. And she thought hiding things or refusing to indulge my curiosity in this business would be enough to keep me away from it.”

Cece’s brow furrowed. “Clearly it didn’t.”

“Nope.”