If anything, the getup only made her more conspicuous. People waiting nearby turned to look at her, their gazes tracking her movements, wondering who hid behind the disguise. She wheeled her luggage straight to the Jeep and all but dove into the front seat, leaving Dad to put their things in the way back.
“Nice shades, Mom.”
She lowered her glasses and looked at me. “Bond, Klara Bond.”
I smiled and leaned over to hug her, glad to see this glimpse of humor returning.
“I missed you so much, Benny,” she said, squeezing me hard.
“I missed you too, Mom.”
She turned and peered into the backseat. “No Ella?” She looked disappointed.
I shook my head. “She didn’t want to impose. And I didn’t want to put her through this with us.”
Mom nodded. “I understand.”
The rear door opened and Dad folded his large frame into the backseat. He buckled himself in and then reached forward to clasp my shoulder. “Hi, son.”
“Hey, Dad.”
“We should go before someone sees you,” Mom said. “I can’t believe you didn’t put a hat on.”
Let the mothering begin.
I grinned as I pulled away from the pickup zone. “Thanks for coming out on such short notice.”
“Of course,” Dad said.
“Did you guys sleep on the planes at all?”
“A little,” he answered.
Mom made a disgruntled sound. “He slept the entire flight from Hawaii to LA.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t?”
“No. The new meds I’m on give me insomnia.”
Well, that was a revelation. “What meds?”
“Antidepressants.”
I guess we were jumping right into this then. “My SSRI gave me pretty bad insomnia when I firstgot on it.”
I saw her turn and look at me out of the corner of my eye. “You’re on antidepressants too?”
“Yup, have been for a while. But can we pause this conversation until we get to the hotel? I need help navigating out of this maze,” I said, handing her my phone.
She pulled up the map app and punched in the hotel’s address. We were quiet the rest of the ride, other than her instructions of “turn left here” or “there’s a merge up ahead, and you need to be in the right lane”.
You could tell how old the city was just from all the twists and turns we took to get to our destination. Nothing ran in a straight line here. The roads were so narrow that they couldn’t have been widened much since the days when horses and carriages had been their main source of traffic.
“Well, we survived, and that’s all that matters,” Dad said when I parked.
There had been a few close calls there. Boston drivers were fucking scary.
Mom gave himA Look. She wasn’t a fan of car-related jokes, for obvious reasons.
