Luke turned to the whiteboard and tried to look like he wasn’t eavesdropping. If Faith didn’t want him to hear the conversation, all she had to do was leave the room.
“Mom, you’ve called my work number again.”
“That’s because you won’t answer your private number.” Luke heard Faith’s mom almost as clearly as if Faith had put the phone on speaker.
“That’s because I’m working, and there’s nothing you can possibly have to say to me right now that is work related. I’m not sure what’s so difficult about this for you to understand. You’re the one who taught me to keep my professional life professional.”
And that was his cue to leave. Luke turned to Faith and mouthed, “I’ll wait outside.”
She grabbed his good arm and shook her head.
Okay. So he would stay.
“So this is my fault?” Faith’s mom’s voice was pitched higher than it had been a few moments ago.
“No. It’s your fault that I grew up to prioritize my job over every other relationship in my life. It’s my prerogative to ignore phone calls from you or anyone else right now because I am working the biggest case of my career, and if I fail, it won’t mean the world will miss out on the hottest new paint color. It will mean people, friends, will die.”
Faith’s mom didn’t respond.
“I’ll call you in a few days. Please do not call me again unless there’s an actual life-or-death emergency.”
“Fine.”
The phone disconnected.
“Sorry about that.” Faith set the phone on the table and picked up her Cherry Coke. “My mother is a piece of work.”
“I gathered as much.”
“Life hasn’t been kind. Some of it she’s brought on herself. She doesn’t always make the best decisions. But no one deserves some of the stuff she’s dealt with. And she...” Faith shrugged. “She has a hard time letting go. Of me. And especially of Hope.”
“I think most moms have that problem. Mine was blowing up my phone so much on Tuesday, I had to put her number on Do Not Disturb.”
“You’d been shot.”
She had a point. “I assume this is about Hope and the dating profiles?”
“We can’t win. Either she’s creating dating profiles and making comments about how much she longs to be a grandmother or she’s arguing that if we won’t get married, we should just move back in with her. She makes little comments about how she’s lonely, how it’s a waste of money, etc.”
“She says waste of money, you say price of sanity.”
“Exactly.” Faith tilted her Cherry Coke toward him in an air toast. “I love her. Doesn’t mean I can live with her. And Hope needs her independence. She’s a bright, intelligent woman who happens to be in a wheelchair.”
“Where’s your dad?” The second the words left his mouth, Luke knew he’d messed up.
Faith squeezed her bottle so hard the plastic protested with a loud pop.
“Sorry.” Luke was in full damage-control mode now. “None of my business.”
“My father”—Faith took a drink, as if she needed to wash a bad taste from her mouth—“decided his first family was a bit too much work. He wasn’t living his best life with us, what with a teenage daughter in a wheelchair and a wife who was coping by becoming an expert on paraplegia while still working fifty hours aweek as an interior designer. She didn’t have time to worry about keeping her husband happy, and he decided we weren’t what he’d signed up for.”
There was no way to respond to that.
“He went in search of another life, and he found one with Gail, a woman who is a whopping two years older than I am.”
Yikes.
“Everything we have—my career, Hope’s career—we got without any help from him. How could he possibly spare any cash when his new kids, two boys, needed the best preschools, then private schools, then braces? Not that Hope and I ever needed any of that.”
