I glanced up from my laptop screen, and looked across the main room at Ross Landscaping to find my mother standing in the doorway of her office, knocking on her own door to alert me to her presence. She wore a thick red sweater, leggings, and boots, in deference to the February chill.
“Doors don’t work that way,” I informed her. “You knock when you want to go in, not when you want to come out.” I took a bite of the apple in my hand and went back to plugging numbers into a spreadsheet.
“Haven’t seen you in a few days.”
“I left you a message. I told you I was taking some sick time.” In reality, the only thing that had been aching was my heart… but after five nights sleeping on Julian’s crappy futon, and four days binge-watching movies while eating cheese curls and ice cream, I actuallydidfeel like shit. Amazing how that worked.
“You working on your business plan?” she asked, taking a few tentative steps toward the big table in the center of the office, where I’d set up my computer. She laid her hands on the top of the chair opposite me.
It was almost amusing. I mean, my mother wasnota tentative person by nature, and she was acting like I was a wounded animal who might turn on her at any mo— Huh. Okay, maybe that was moreaccuratethan amusing.
“Nope,” I said, popping the “p” sound. “Going to place an extra order for ice melt, since we’re running low, and trying to figure out how much we’ll need to last the season.”
“Oh.” She drummed her fingers against the wood and watched me take another bite and chew it. It was very off-putting.
“Something you need?” I asked around the apple.
“To clear the air.”
I swallowed. “Air’s clear.”
She tried again. “I was out of line, going to Micah.”
“You were.”
“Someday, when you have children, you’ll—”
“God, can you imagine? I might just forget I have them andleavethem someplace. Or trade them for a handful of magic beans.” Another bite of apple. “Who knows what I’m capable of?”
She pulled out the chair and sat down. “Okay.Enough. You want the kind of family where we’re honest, right? That’s what you said to me, after Thanksgiving? Well, here’s some honesty.”
I watched her as I chewed and swallowed, but she seemed sincere.
“Okay, shoot.” I set my apple on the table next to the computer, sat back in my chair and folded my arms over my chest.
“I was not always a cautious person,” she began, laying her hands out flat on the table. “In fact, caution’s not in my nature at all. You get that from me.”
I snorted.
“You forget, Constantine, I was a girl who fell in love with a man she’d only known a couple of months. My parents werenotthrilled.” She shook her head, but smiled too. “I was the girl who followed this guy back to his tiny little town in New York a few months after that.” She looked around the room. “I was the one who encouraged her husband to start his own business, even when Jules was a baby and we didn’t have a pot to piss in.”
“Language.”
She raised one eyebrow at me. “Don’t you test my patience, Constantine.”
I pressed my lips together. “Sorry, Mama.”
“Anyway.After your dad died, things changed.Ichanged. Suddenly I had three boys to look after and a business to run. I think…” She hesitated. “I think I started focusing on the wrong things. On trying tocontrolthe wrong things. I guess I thought if I pretended we were done grieving and pushed through, it’d make things easier for all of us. And I did all of you boys a real disservice, Con. But especially you.”
I snorted. “What the heck are you talking about? You didn’t do anything to me. You were fine. I was the one who—”
“Who didn’t have healthy outlets for his anger and grief. Who probably should’ve gotten help, if I wasn’t too stubborn and proud to let anyone think I couldn’t handle my boys and my family on my own.” She toyed with the end of her braid. “I tried to tell myself it was teenaged hijinks. You were fourteen, fifteen. I’d done wild things, too. And then Trent Gaynor happened.”
“This is ancient history,” I told her. “There is no need to hash over—”
“Oh, yes there is. Because we never really talked about it, so you made assumptions. And those assumptions have been festering inside you like shrapnel for nearly ten years. And I didn’t understand that until last week. Until… that conversation with Micah.”
She licked her lips. “I’ve told you already, I forgave you about thirty seconds after Mitch showed up at the house and told us what had happened to Trent. I had never seen you look so… small, Con. Not physically, but emotionally. You were so lost and so sorry, and I… I realized inthat minutejust how much I’d messed up. I hadn’t seen your behavior for what it was. If there is anyone I’ve blamed all these years, it’s myself.”
