Page 140 of Getting Down to Business

Chapter 28

Alyssa parked in the same spot she’d parked many times in her life.

Her mother’s small yard was neat with a short plastic fence bordering a tiny garden that marked the end of her lot. The window air-conditioner was humming like crazy, and a puddle had formed on the narrow sidewalk under the unit.

She hadn’t even made it up to the deck when the door opened and her mother squealed in excitement.

“Alyssa! What are you doing here? Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? Is that your car? Is everything okay? How long are you staying? What can I get you to drink?”

“I didn’t know I was coming. No, it’s a rental. I’m fine,” Alyssa answered as many of the questions she could remember.

“Come in, come in,” her mother demanded as if Alyssa would have driven all this way and not come in. “I have to leave for my shift in a half hour, but we can chat until then.”

Alyssa took in the cluttered but clean living room-kitchen area and shook her head.

“Mom, I need to ask you a huge favor, and I want you to say okay.”

“Of course. What do you need? I have some money. I was saving it for new brakes, but I can put that off for a few more months.”

“I don’t need money. I need you to call off work and sit and talk with me.”

Her mother looked so shocked someone would have thought Alyssa had asked her to be a surrogate to her alien triplets.

“Call off work?”

“Yes. I don’t think you’ve ever called off. They will understand, and I—” This was difficult to say because she’d never said it before. “I need you, Mom. Please.”

“Okay. Give me a second.”

Without another word, her mother flipped open her cell phone and sent an honest-to-goodness text. It took forever as she pressed the keys three times until she got the correct letter.

How did people function like this? Alyssa wondered. She would get her mother a smartphone for Christmas. And maybe classes on how to use it.

“So what are we going to talk about?” her mother asked after she received a text back that her boss had approved her sick time.

“We’re going to talk about all the things we don’t talk about. Like Donnie, and what happened between you and grandma. I want you to tell me about my dad, and I’m going to tell you about Grayson, the man I’m in love with, except I totally blew it.”

“Wow.” Her mother still looked shocked. “I think this calls for drinks.”

Her mother served them cosmos made from vodka and Hawaiian Punch in Tupperware, and then they got down to it. For the rest of the night and into the early morning, they talked and laughed and cried.

“So what are you going to do about Gray?” her mother asked, her lids drooping with exhaustion.

“I’m not sure. He moved to California to get away from me. I can’t very well show up there and make him talk to me.”

“Why not? You did it to me, and I have to say, this is probably the best night of my entire life.” It was pretty high up on the list for Alyssa too. “Why have you stayed away?”

“We never talked about what happened with Donnie, and I thought you saw me as silly to have trusted a man like that. Or any man. You never did. You were always so strong.”

“Hold on just a minute. It’s easy not to try. You don’t need strength for that. It takes more strength to trust someone. It means you know you’d be able to pick yourself up if you had to. It means you trust yourself enough to know who you can believe in and who you can’t. I’ve taken the easy way out. I had you and it was easy to focus on taking care of you and not worrying about anything else. Don’t mistake that for strength, Alyssa.”

Liss swallowed and nodded, understanding the truth in her mother’s words.

“Let’s get to sleep. I have plans.”

Her mother smiled, and clapped her hands.

“Good for you.”