I laugh at this.
Cap’s feet shuffle through the yard, his cane balancing him out as he goes. Sunny claps her hands overhead. The kids wiggle all around them like a pack of sugar-crazed monkeys between cannonballs into the pool. Off to the side, Nash and Reese are in an intense-looking conversation, hands waving wildly. From the engaged look on Reese’s face, I have no doubt it’s about his expansion.
I hope she talks him out of it.
“Dad told me you lied,” I say without heat. “About him not knowing about me.”
“I did.” Her eyes stay on him.
“Why?”
“Why,” she repeats with a scoff. “You know why. And you’re glad I did.”
“Debatable.”
We exchange a familiar look before her eyes quickly go back to him.
“You want him back?” I ask. “Like to be with him?”
She lets out a resigned sigh. “Afraid that ship has sailed.”
“Why?” My attention goes from the makeshift tiki-torch-lit dance floor in the yard where everyone else is now dancing—even Reese—back to my mom. “For the woman who insisted I could figure things out with Nash. Which—” I gesture through the air between me and him. “Kinda nailed it, Mom.”
“Bet that hurt you to say,” she says with a knowing cinch of her lips.
I roll my eyes. “I’m serious. If we can do it, why not you and Cap?”
“Not always that simple,” she says. “Not always time.”
“There would be if he came back to Fontain with us,” I argue. “I asked him to.”
Her brows lift. “And?”
“He said no. But maybe you could ask and he’d change his mind. I see the way you look at each other.”
“Hm.” She smiles and waves at him when he looks our way. “It’s for the best anyway. I sent you here to get Nash—he’s the love of your life and you’re the love of his—but your dad—” She stops to sip her drink and avoids my gaze. “I sent you here to tell him goodbye.”
“Goodbye?” I parrot. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Because really, what the hell is that supposed to mean?
Across the yard, Cap and Nash are flapping their arms like wings, Bennie between them with hearts in her eyes. She is so damn happy.
Yet my mother says nothing.
“Mom?” I sit straight up. “Because of your surgery? Because—” I swallow, glancing at Cap again. “I know we’ve pressured you into it, but we can wait a little, I guess. Or try the radiation even though it won’t remove it. Or?—”
“It’s not that. I’ll get the surgery. I know I need it—I’ve known since the doctor said it, I’ve just been scared,” she admits. “And I put you through all this. Least I can do is hold up my end of the bargain.” She laughs softly. “Sometimes we have to get old to wise up is all.”
“Okay ...” That makes no sense. “And?”
“And ... he’s sick, Rue. Life doesn’t last forever,” she says, quoting herself as she pats my knee and stands.
“So?” I look at him dancing. “His oxygen tank can travel to Fontain. We have a pharmacy—that man downs his pills with liquor. He can handle it.”
I don’t know how to read the look on her face—maybe I don’t want to. There’s pity. Sadness. Regret. So many things that don’t belong in this idyllic backyard.
“Let’s go have some fun,” she says with a jerk of her head. “You seem to have at least figured that out since you’ve been here.”
I give her an annoyed look, but there’s nothing else to say. Something is off, missing from her explanation, but there’s no telling what because she’s left me for them. Once her hand is in Cap’s, they move their bodies to the beat, her laughing the generous way she always has.
