Not believable.
Another laborious nod from Kathleen.
“Mom, what do you want?”
“You fly to New York for this man. He flies to New York for you. Now he’s coming here...”
“I did not fly to New York for him, I flew for the book. And me.”
Kathleen’s pauses were maddening.
“Mom.”
“Well, there’s no denying thatheflew there for you. And I let him.”
She added the last part with a wicked smirk that then shifted to something more earnest. “If you could have seen him in the library, Merritt, he just—”
“Mom, I don’t want this right now.”
Merritt stood up but stopped short of storming off to her room like a moody sophomore.
“What time is he getting here?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Hopefully soon. You’re running out of CDs.”
“Mom.”
Kathleen sighed.
“I’m going to eat some of this. Do you want some?”
She raised the bags. Merritt nodded, and her mother nodded back.
“All right. And then I’m going to walk across the street to check in on Peggy Stafford.”
Peggy was an octogenarian neighbor whom Kathleen had never once visited in the last five months.
Merritt groaned.
“Mom, seriously, don’t—”
“I am going to eat some of this and then go check in on Peggy, all right?”
Merritt took her glasses off to rub her eyes.
“Do whatever you want, Mom.”
When she replaced them, Kathleen was smiling at her in a soft, amused way.
“Oh, Merritt. I think you love that man.”
Merritt opened her mouth to protest, but Kathleen spoke first.
“Actually, I’m really only in the mood for soup. I’ll take it with me to Peggy’s, and the rest is yours. Sound good?”
Merritt dropped into her mother’s favorite armchair.
