Shit.There was no way around this mess. She needed to go straight through. “Yes.”
“Is he still?”
“Of course not.”
“But you wanted to marry him instead of Dad. Because that’s no big deal,” she added sarcastically. “I’m sure everybody’s mom married their second choice of a husband.”
She hesitated, unsure of exactly where this was going and suddenly feeling like she was walking through a minefield. “It’s complicated, April.”
“Doesn’t seem complicated to me. You had very strong feelings for him when you were young. I totally get that, because I’m young and I have strong feelings, too.”
“So, that’s what this is about. I was not eleven at the time, young lady. Sloan and I didn’t start dating until we were fifteen.”
“Which is, like, a whole thousand days older than I am, so a totally different situation. Right. I couldn’t possibly understand real feelings a thousand days before you did. Oh, wait! Yes, I could, because I’m not a little kid anymore.”
Joanne rolled her eyes. “I am so not up for this right now.”
“Well, I’m sorry if my timing isn’t convenient, Mother.”
The patronizing tone in her daughter’s voice had Jo spinning around and pointing her finger. “Look, me falling in love at fifteen is not the same thing as you professing your love to a complete stranger on Instagram!”
“He is not a stranger!” She held up her phone.
Jo grabbed the device. “Absolutely ridiculous.” She scrolled through the applications.
“Give that back!”
“Did you already install it? Who am I kidding, it was the first thing you did, right?” She shook her head, irritation with herself far greater than her annoyance with her child. She should have realized April would go right back to her conversation at the first opportunity.
There it was, the familiar icon winking back at her, and with a frustrated jab, she deleted it. “You just lost your phone.”
“Mom!”
Sloan pulled open his door. “All set.”
She kept yelling at April. “Clearly, you can’t be trusted. I’m so freaking angry right now.”
“What’s the matter?”
Jo hopped out of the camper, desperately needing to get away from her daughter before she exploded. Lucas was arranging logs in the fire pit, Christmas music already playing on a small boom box, and she turned on Sloan. “You realize it’s, like, thirty-five degrees out here? Isn’t it a little cold for a fire?”
“Almost forty.” He smiled. “You watched me load the firewood. What did you think I was going to do with it?”
“I wasn’t thinking.”
Lucas whined, “Can’t we please, Mom? Sloan says we can make s’mores.”
Just like camp! The boy was so excited, and some part of her resented that Sloan was mister fun and games, while she was the fun ender, afraid for their lives. “Fine. Sure. Whatever.”
Sloan touched her back, and she jerked away.
He furrowed his brow. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Just go ahead and make your fire.” He crossed to Lucas and instructed him on how to stack the logs so the fire would get plenty of oxygen. David would have made the fire himself or been such a perfectionist about how it should be done that the activity would barely have been fun for Lucas. But Sloan had a way with the boy that clearly said he understood children, and the difference between him and the man she’d married was like salt pressed deep into a festering wound.
She turned away, needing space but unable to go back into the camper without another run-in with April. “I’m going for a walk.”
“Wait.” Sloan handed Lucas a lighter and showed him where to light the fire, earning the boy a pat on the back and a proud smile. “Great job, kid. Grab the marshmallows out of the back of the camper.”
