She was wrong, and he was pretty sure she was being a melodramatic female—perfection, indeed—but her opinion sliced him deep. “You’re too old to be a brat.”
“That what your Anna Grace calls me?”
Well, color him slow on the uptake. She wasjealous. “You get me twice as much as she does, but she appreciates it three times more than you.”
Her lips curled into a snide kind of sneer, the kind that usually preceded a slimy comment from a drunkard in a bar. He cut her off. “Never thought I’d meet a Yankee with better manners than my own sister. You go on and nurse your mad all day if you want. I’m gonna go enjoy a beautiful football game.”
He plunked the piggy bank on the burnished oak dresser, then headed for the back stairs, half surprised, half relieved she didn’t follow him.
When he got to the kitchen, Momma was alone, but he could smell Anna’s shampoo lingering in the air.
That scent stayed with a man.
She had a couple of views on how the world worked that were sticking with him too. Including one or two about his family. She’d been good for him that way.
Momma looked up at him with sad eyes that seemed to be going around the female population in his life. Her mouth settled in a grim line, and she went back to the pot she was washing. “Sweet potato pie’s all gone.”
“Do you love Russ?”
The pan slipped. Water and suds splattered the counter. She fumbled for a towel, her cheeks taking on a stain, her hands shaking. She twisted her face to him, but before their gazes connected, she dropped her chin and pointed her nose at the mess. “Yes.” Her voice was soft but laced with steel, answering both the question he’d asked, and the one that had always lingered between them.
Do you love Russ more than you loved Daddy?
But he’d never asked.
He’d never asked, because he hadn’t wanted to know. Hadn’t wanted to believe that this woman who’d stood shoulder to shoulder with Daddy—keeping Jackson straight, raising him to understand and appreciate the value of a clean house, of a good meal, of the backbone of a family—could have loved another man more than she’d loved his daddy.
Maybe loved another man more than she loved her own son.
“Does he make you happy?”
He’d never asked her that before either.
Never considered it part of the equation.
But she was more than just his momma. She had her own life as much as he had his, and Daddy was gone, and Mommabeing happy or unhappy wouldn’t change that.
She might as well be happy.
Sheshouldbe happy.
Her shoulders trembled. She made a quick swipe at her cheek with the back of her hand. When she looked up at him, her nose matched her cheeks. Her chin wobbled. Her shiny eyes asked what would’ve been the world to him at seventeen.
At thirty-three, he realized it was long past time to give her his blessing to have her own life, and to enjoy it.
He felt as if one of those biscuits he’d had for breakfast was stuck in his throat, another one lodged up against his heart. “Reckon he’s done more right by you than I have.”
“Oh, Jackson.”
And suddenly she was hugging him with all her might, smelling like blackberries and biscuits, and he felt about six years old again, letting her titanium strength crush all the bad and turn it into hope and peace and an innocent belief in the good of the world. “My sweet baby boy,” she whispered. “You’ve always done as right as you could. Never could’ve asked for more.”
The back door banged shut. Jackson broke away from Momma. Russ stopped in the threshold.
He looked between them, mustache twitching, then settled his gaze on Jackson. “Wish your sister had your good taste in dates.”
Momma’s cheeks and nose flushed deeper.
Another door shut in a different part of the house. Jackson heard a squeal, followed by a barely-past-puberty drawl.
