She tried to be methodical, but it was hard, when her ancestors’ chosen filing method appeared to be “just shove it over there.” Not to mention that her mind was largely elsewhere, scuttling back and forth between the memories evoked by her mother’s painting and that confusing, entirely unexpected kiss. She couldn’t figure out what to make of Nick. Entrepreneur on the make or genuinely decent guy? The way he’d held her when she’d lost it—the thought of that still made her wince—and the way he’d talked about his family both seemed to signal the latter. But then she remembered her first impressions of him and those offhand comments about value and valuations. It didn’t help, Julia thought wryly, that she had all the emotional stability of a wet dishrag right now. It wasn’t just that she felt emotionally wrung out; she was off-balance, too. She’d always taken it for granted, part of the framework of her life, that her mother had been, for lack of a better word, a flake, that she must not have really cared very much about Julia.
