Her mother laughed. “And now you’re paid enormously for both.”
“Essentially, yes.”
“And the betting company,” her mother said, in the tone that meant she’d done her research. “That started from nothing?”
“Less than nothing.” He said it simply, without the fake modesty that some people used when they talked about their success. Just a fact, stated plainly. “I had about eight hundred dollars and a good idea, and I was too stubborn to let either of them go to waste.”
Her mother looked at him for a moment. “Jasmine’s the same way,” she said. “Stubborn as the day is long. Gets it from me, unfortunately.”
“I’ve noticed,” Nate said, and glanced at Jasmine with a look that was dry and warm at the same time.
Those feelings, the ones she wasn’t supposed to feel, peeked their heads out. Jasmine pushed them back down.
After lunch, her mother produced a photo album, because of course she did. Jasmine saw it coming from across the room and said, “Mom, absolutely not,” and her mother said, “Oh, hush,” and Nate said, “Please.”
They sat on the small sofa, the three of them, while her mother turned pages and narrated, and Jasmine died quietly at the photographs of herself at fourteen in a school production ofGrease. The hair was big. Too big. The makeup too much.
“She was Sandy,” her mother said proudly.
“I can see that,” Nate said.
“I wasn’t supposed to be Sandy,” Jasmine said. “I was recast after the girl who originally got the part was out with the flu.”
“You made a better Sandy,” her mother said serenely, turning another page.
Nate laughed. It happened more often now, that laugh. She’d started noting the things that produced it without meaning to, which was the kind of behavior she needed to stop immediately.
They stayed longer than they’d planned. That was how it always went at her mother’s. You arrived with a set time for departure and left two hours later than you meant to. The light had shifted from afternoon to early evening gold by the time Jasmine started gathering her jacket and her bag.
Her mother walked them to the door. She hugged Nate, which Jasmine hadn’t expected, and which Nate accepted with only a brief flash of surprise before he hugged her back. Then she walked Jasmine the extra few steps to the stairwell door while Nate waited outside for her.
“He’s wonderful,” her mother said quietly.
“Mom.”
“I’m just saying.”
“He has my seal of approval. He’s a good man, Jaz. Under all that.” She waved a hand vaguely in the direction of whateverall thatmeant. The money, the suits, the six-foot-two boardroom energy. “He’s a good man.”
“It’s fake,” Jasmine said. “You know that. You know the whole story.”
Her mother looked at her for a long moment. Then she smiled, slow and certain. She reached out and patted Jasmine’s cheek once, lightly.
And winked.
“Mom,” Jasmine said.
But her mother was already turning back toward the condo, entirely pleased with herself, pulling the door shut behind her.
Jasmine stood in the stairwell for a second with her eyes closed. Then she turned and walked out to where Nate was waiting, phone pocketed, shoulders relaxed in a way they almost never were in the hours after they’d been anywhere public.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
“She approves of you,” Jasmine said, starting for the stairs.
“I like her enormously,” he said, falling into step beside her.
“Don’t tell her that. She’s already insufferable.” She smiled, though, to show him that she didn’t mean it one bit.
