"Hey, sweetie!" Mom's voice always made his heart quicken. She'd been his biggest supporter after the accident, pushing him to complete his O & M training, helping him furnish the house, listening to all of the audiobooks he recorded. She still sounded the same as she had a decade ago, her voice bright and warm.
"Everything okay?" she asked. "You sound out of breath."
"Finished a workout." She wouldn't know it was an excuse. "How's Steve?" His stepdad.
"Oh, fine. We're taking a cooking class together. Turns out he's a better chef than I am, and he's been hiding it since we got married."
Steve was almost a decade older than she was and had worked construction all his life, though he was making noises about retiring. He was one of the most easygoing people Noah had ever met. His mom had once described Steve as a bald Santa in steel-toed work boots.
"Speaking of cooking, we were wondering if you'd changed your mind about coming down for Thanksgiving."
He'd known she would bring it up. She wouldn't be Mom if she didn't worry about him, and the holiday was only a week and a half away.
"I can't make it this year, Mom. I'm pushing to finish this contract on time."
She didn't sound like she lost her smile when she said, "All right, honey. There's always Christmas."
Mom knew why he preferred to be alone. And if she didn't agree with him, she gave in with good grace. This time.
He wouldn't see her at Christmas either. Steve had purchased cruise tickets for the two of them months ago. It would be an anniversary surprise, and Mom didn't know yet. And it just happened that the cruise dates were the week of Christmas.
"You sound upset, dear. Are you sure nothing's wrong? Are you getting enough sleep?"
His thoughts whirled through an almost instant reel of all of it. Jilly. The troublemaker boys. Lindsey playing kitty at his door in the middle of the night.
"Everything's fine." He forgave himself the little white lie. His mom worried too much.
“Are you sure?”
He felt a muscle tick in his jaw. It wasn’t as if she wouldn’t find out the next time she visited.
“I have a new neighbor.” He winced the moment the words slipped from his lips.
His mom hadn't lived in Sutter's Hollow for years but kept up on local gossip thanks to social media and several of her friends. Mom had loved living in the small town. The house they'd moved into when he was a teenager was a 1950's bungalow that had been two blocks from both the middle school and high school.
When he'd moved himself onto this twenty-acre farm seven years ago, his city-slicker mom had been appalled. She'd been in a new relationship with Steve at the time, and Noah had used her distraction to his advantage, moving before she really knew what he’d done. He'd wanted the emptiness. He still wanted it.
"Anyone I know?" Mom asked.
He ground his back teeth. Made himself inhale and exhale. Tried to sound normal. "Jilly Tatum."
"Tatum?" He could imagine her tapping one finger against the corner of her lips, her eyes soft and unfocused. It was her favorite thinking pose. "Weren't you friends in high school?"
"It was a long time ago." He pushed himself off the floor. Bent and brushed his fingertips along the floor until he found the sweaty shirt he'd tossed into the corner.
"Not that long," Mom countered. "Have you gone over to say hi?"
"No."
"Well, you should make an effort. What if you need to borrow a cup of sugar sometime?"
He pinched the bridge of his nose. He would rather go without. And Mom knew it.
"I've got to—"Go.
"She had a sister, didn't she?” Mom asked. “Which one married the famous bull rider?"
Callum was the now world-famous bull rider. It hurt to squeeze out the words. "That's Jilly's sister. Iris."
