She keeps spinning the dial, as though trying to find the bandwidth furthest from the one Mona spoke on. “Don’t even think about it.”
I plant my elbow on the armrest and glare out my window.
“I can hear you thinkin’ about it, Angie.”
Finally Mom turns the radio off, and the silence is so loud I wish she’d just tune in to her classical station already.
“Don’t you see this is a calculated move to get her hands on other people’s talent?”
I don’t retort that maybe Mona genuinely wants to help a person, because Mom won’t hear me. She’s deaf and blind to all of Mona’s good qualities.
In complete silence, we drive past the Belle Meade Plantation, take a couple of turns, then veer down a road lined with massive houses.
“Mom, I told you I’ll bike over to Rae’s.”
“I’m not dropping you off.” Her tone is slightly more supple than earlier. There’s still an edge to it, but I can tell she’s fighting to calm down. She’ll probably go into cleaning mode the second we get home. That’s her favorite pastime when she has steam to blow off.Dust bunnies, beware.
“Okay.” I sigh. “So where are we going?”
“I wanted to show you my new project.”
She glides the car in front of a mammoth wrought-iron gate, then powers my window down and leans over me.
“This?” I gape at the gray stone mansion with its white-framed bow windows overlooking a sloping, manicured lawn planted with cedars and sharp hedges. “Whoa. It’s huge.”
I shouldn’t be surprised, really. Since the feature she landed inArchitectural Digestlast spring, everyone with money and four big walls calls to hire her.
“Who bought it?”
“A man called Jeff Dylan.”
“What does he do?”
“He’s an entertainment lawyer.”
I gather my wavy shoulder-length hair and lift it off my neck, then coil it into a topknot. Even without an elastic, it holds. “Is he, by any chance, hot and single?”
“This is a job, Angie, not a first date. Besides, I’m not looking for a boyfriend.”
This is one of the reasons I believe she must’ve loved Dad… she’s never replaced him.
After a couple more seconds of ogling her new project, she pulls the car back into the street. “I saw Jasper the other night.”
“Yeah?”
“You two used to be such good friends.”
My hackles rise, because I sense what she’s getting at. Mom and Jasper’s mom are best friends and they secretly—okay, they’re totally not subtle about it—wish that Jasper and I get together someday. That’llneverhappen, though. He’s a jock. I don’t date jocks. I don’t date anyone, for that matter. I don’t need any distractions.
“Is he still at the top of your ‘Hot List’?”
I whip my neck to the left so fast it cracks. “Mom!”
“What?” she asks, all innocent.
“How do you know about that list? Did you go through my things?”
“My biggest pet peeve is a messy room. You want to keep me out? Clean it up.”
