“Well, I’m not a child anymore, Mother, and it is my business. It’smy family. It’s my life. I had to grow up without these people with no explanation, and every time I tried to talk about it, you shut me down. I want to know. Did it have something to do with Annie? The reason why she was sick?”
“Emma, I did not pick up this phone to pick at old wounds. I am your mother. My responsibility is to do what’s best for you. To make the right decisions. To keep you safe… to…” I detected the faintest break in her voice before she got quiet. My mother was crying. My heart clenched at the idea that I’d driven her to this point, but I couldn’t stop myself. I was too close to something resembling an answer.
“Mother, I just want the truth. I have so many questions and have gone so many years without answers. We hardly ever talked about Annie after she died. There were barely any pictures of her in the house. I don’t even know how she died. She was my sister. I have a right to know!” I was vaguely aware that I was shouting, something I hadn’t done when talking to my mother since I was a teenager, and even then, it had been a risky venture. Today, I couldn’t control myself. I was sick of her hypocrisy, sick of her condescending tone. She had the nerve to accuse me of burying my head in the sand and pretending my problems didn’t exist. She’d been pretending half of our family didn’t exist for almost twenty-five years, and I’d had enough. “Just tell me!” I shouted. “Talk to me. Did it have something to do with medical marijuana?”
“Don’t you dare raise your v—What did you just say?” Her voice dropped to the dangerously low tone that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up, even at age twenty-nine.
“Did—” My voice sounded like a croak. I cleared my throat and continued. “Did it have something to do with—”
“Emma, you are treading in dangerous territory, and I’m not going to listen to it anymore. You need to come back to Atlanta, fix your life, and stop trying to dig up the past to distract yourself from dealing with your problems. Goodbye.”
“Mother, I—” It was too late. She’d hung up.
I stared at my phone screen for a few moments before it felt too heavy, and I dropped it on the table with a loud clatter. My tears were next, followed by a low keening sound. It took me a few moments to realize that I was making that terrible sound before I dropped my head into my hands and sobbed at the kitchen table.
The mattress dipped before I could open my eyes, but I didn’t have to look to know who had crawled into my bed. He curved his body around mine, snaked his arm around my waist, and pulled me into him.
“Hey, sleeping beauty,” he whispered and dropped a kiss on my ear.
“What are you doing here?” I said in a hoarse whisper. “I thought I was supposed to meet you at the diner for lunch.”
“I thought so, too.” Another kiss, this time on my neck. “But you didn’t show up.” I gasped and tried to sit up, but Dan tightened his grip on my waist until I stilled. “So I tried to call you but you didn’t answer—”
My phone was still on the kitchen counter.
“—so I came home to make sure everything was okay.”
“What time is it?” My watch was charging on the nightstand, and it didn’t look like Dan was letting me up anytime soon—not that I was complaining.
“It’s a little after three,” he responded.
“I’ve been asleep for four hours,” I moaned.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Talk about what?” I said, still not facing him.
“About what happened at the committee meeting that made you come home and cry yourself to sleep fully clothed in the middle of the day.” He gently turned me to face him.
“The committee meeting was fine. It was great, actually, but this woman came up to me afterward and said some stuff about my grandparents and Annie—good stuff,” I assured him when his brow furrowed, “but it made me curious, and I called my mother and…” My voice cracked and my sentence died on my lips, which Dan promptly covered with his own.
“It’s okay, Emma.” He smoothed a large palm over my back. “We don’t have to talk about it now.”
“Thank you,” I whispered and tucked my head between his cheek and his shoulder as he held me.
“Are you hungry? Erica sent home some lunch for you.”
“No, I don’t think I could eat anything right now,” I mumbled into his sweater.
“It’s waffles with strawberry ice cream.”
“Give me five minutes.”
Two weeks had passed since my conversation with my mother, and I hadn’t had too much time to wallow in self-pity because, as I was delighted to discover, once you chip through Dan Pednekar’s grumpy exterior, it was nearly impossible to be sad when he was around. He would probably say the same thing about me. We’d never brought up the L-word again after our conversation in his apartment, but it was pretty obvious that we were in love. At least, I was. He’d literally met me at my worst, and almost two months later, he was still here.
I also had very little time to think about my mother because the Harvest Festival was a little over a month away, and planning had kicked into high gear. Vendor applications were piling up. Banners had to be designed and ordered. Structures had to be built.
Today’s meeting was being held in the school gymnasium instead of the church. I was surprised at how large the school was until I realized that it wasn’t just a high school, as I’d first thought, but for nursery school through high school. We’d finally decided on the order of the musicians for the closing day concert, which took way too long, when Belinda adjourned the meeting. I was tired, grumpy, and hungry. If I had known that this meeting was going to use so much of my energy, I would have skipped the morning shift at Erica’s because, despite being so hungry I could eat a bear, I had used up my people quota for the day.
