Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
“Mom?” I didn’t step aside. “What are you doing here?”
“Was that Ivan Kenneth here earlier? Are you seeing him again?” How had she known about him?
She pushed me aside, all red hair and leathered skin. She’d sat out in the sun or gone to the tanning bed weekly since I was old enough to remember. She told Aunt Cadence once that the freckles would connect eventually, whether she got skin cancer or not.
I almost stepped in front of her to keep her from coming in, but as soon as I turned to look in the living room, I noticed the spot where Hadrian had stood was empty.
“No, I’m not. Why would you think that?” If I told her he was a realtor, she’d find a way to flag him back down. She’d always liked him. Only for his family, though.
I let her circle the foyer with her sunglasses on.
She pushed them atop her head to squint at the skylight.
The smell of cigarette smoke, cheap perfume, and peppermint candies trailed after her.
“Ran into ’im at that gas station up the street.
Got to talking for a bit, and I hope you know, you should be.
He’s got money. You know what men with money do. ”
“Cheat on you and pick the other woman?”
Her head snapped down, her mouse-colored eyes narrowing. “Is that a snide remark?”
I kept my face placid. “Why are you here, Mom?” I ran through a mental list. Besides my ignoring her—not unusual—and the text about Vince and Penny, there was no need for her to visit.
“What, I can’t come visit my daughter?”
She never had before.
“I don’t know. There was a funeral a while ago. Maybe you should have come. I was there.” I gathered her comment aside and tucked it away for later.
Something was definitely going on.
She was too busy looking around—peeking in the office, the living room, up the stairs, to catch the tone in my voice. Instead, she made her way to the living room, dropped her overfilled purse on the couch. Her wrists, I noticed, were slender. More so than last time.
“Whew. I’m starving. What do you have in here? Why’s it so dark? You keep the lights off to save money?” She flipped three on while making a beeline to the fridge.
My feet were rooted to the floor. She rifled through the fridge, the cabinets, then the corner pantry. Finally, she withdrew a box of crackers and sliced cheese from the fridge. She tore the crackers open with ferocity.
My marrow curdled. All that food, and I knew exactly what she’d do with it. She’d leave crackers strewn over the counter, the floor, never clean them. And then, in a day or two, the ants would come in, if I didn’t come after her to clean it up.
The pressure from earlier migrated from my shoulders and morphed into an ugly, tangled creature that wrapped around my stomach. My hands clenched at my sides. I wanted to tear everything from her hands, tell her it’s mine, she can’t have it, she can’t do this in my house—
“Kitchen looks nice.” I couldn’t help but notice the dark circles under her eyes, which were bloodshot and smartly offset by the dark charcoal lining them.
I bet if I tried to run my hands through the back of her hair, there’d be knots, disguised as artful teasing.
She’d always said knots like that were normal.
As I grew older, I found out that a lot of things came with matted hair. Sometimes it was depression. Neglect.
I’d cried when I’d realized the second one.
Her nose upturned. “Better than the last time I saw it.” She must have been talking about the chickens I’d donated.
“Yeah,” I said, dead. “No roosters.”
It felt almost like an out-of-body experience, watching her eat in Harthwait’s kitchen.
She didn’t feel like a person. She was the ghost of an idea that returned once in a while to remind me that a void was still there. That I wasn’t wanted, that I wasn’t good enough for her then, so why would I be now?
Oh, right. Money.
She wiped the back of her hand over her mouth, then brushed the crumbs straight onto the floor.
“Smells odd. Like sulfur.” She motioned to the open breakfast nook windows, which I knew I’d shut this morning.
“God, Lanny. You’re letting all the AC out.
” With a handful of crackers and cheese, she shoved them shut and turned each of their latches.
I could feel it: my body dying while I watched her.
I couldn’t ask her to leave. I couldn’t ask her to stay. I couldn’t do—anything.
“You drove here today.” I needed information out of her, but digging too obviously only made her defensive. I needed for her to talk about her problems. The rest would spill along with it.
“That’s right I did,” she said. She pointed a cracker at me. “Three hours. Can you believe it? Didn’t stop once.”
She could make a three-hour drive today, but she couldn’t have driven three hours for her sister’s funeral?
“I didn’t text you because I was with Ivan.” My hands fisted.
She nodded, more to herself. “That. That right there. Don’t get me wrong—great looking kid, right—but you didn’t answer my calls!
Why didn’t you tell me, Lanny? Vince! Of all people.
Single. Can you believe it? Why didn’t you say anything?
” She stuffed the crackers back in the box, didn’t fold it shut, only stuffed it back on a shelf in a cabinet it didn’t come from.
Then she reached back in the fridge and pulled out a jar of pickles and Emma’s leftover fettuccine.
I watched with stifled horror as she opened the container, didn’t microwave it, and stuck the pickle in as if the fettuccine were a dipping sauce.
“I didn’t know,” I said.
“God, more lies. Your father loves you. Of course you knew.” She took a large bite. Juice dribbled over her chin, down her T-shirt. Stains already marred the pink cotton. “Lanny, that man knows what he did wrong. Tell him. I need you to tell him that I was right, all those years. A cheater.”
“He knows, Mom.” Even if he didn’t know, Dad didn’t care what anyone thought. There was a reason he was able to go about his affairs while Penny turned a blind eye.
“Well, then why isn’t he here?” She motioned to the house. “If he knew, he’d be apologizing already. It’s been years.”
“Why would he need to be here?” Besides the fact that he hadn’t called me in months.
“Because! I need a place to live.” She took another bite of the pickle. “He can’t disrupt everyone’s lives and then expect to get away with it, right?”
Bingo. It was like I saw the edge of a waterfall and the little life raft I knelt on had no paddle.
“I thought I could stay with you for a bit. Of course, I knew you wouldn’t mind.
Then I can talk to your father once you get ahold of him and bring him here.
So we can have a family discussion. Is that what the kids call it these days?
” She took a single piece of fettuccine between two fingers and slurped it up.
“We’ve always had this unrequited love thing going on, your father and I.
I figured it was time he came around. I always knew he’d finally leave that wench and come back to me. ”
I balked a little. “You just said Penny left—”
“The point is, they’re done.” She rubbed her sauce covered fingers together. “And now he knows he made a mistake.”
Mom thought this was her chance to get Vince back? As if he’d finally, after over twenty years, saw the err in his ways?
I wasn’t quite sure she understood the definition of unrequited love.
“Besides.” She waved her hands at the ceiling. “You’ve got all this money now. You can afford to have me for a bit.”
A sharp, residual pain started at my middle back. Twisted left, then right.
I swallowed a scream.
“We’re still renovating the rooms,” I said. “Emma and I are going to be switching—”
“She is here, isn’t she? Oh, honey.” Mom wiped her purple stiletto nails on her frayed short-shorts and hustled over to me. “See, what did I tell you? Nothing but a mooch. She’s just here because she thinks your father loves you more. I told you.” She poked me in the shoulder.
I shook my head, bypassing what she said. “I’m paying for you to get a hotel room, okay? That way we can get on with the renovations—”
“What? No!” she exclaimed. Squeezed my shoulders.
I took her wrists, pulled her hands off me, and took a step back.
“Mom. This is work to me. I can’t do it with extra people in the house.”
“I can help. I’ve worked before.” Her nose crinkled. “It can’t be that hard.”
I took a breath. “No.”
A dash of anger ignited in her eyes. “Lanny, I can’t believe you. After all I did for you growing up. When those kids teased you so bad you didn’t go to school. I helped you through all of it. Now you won’t help me? Your own mother?”
Oh, get up, it can’t be that bad, she’d snipped, just show the boy your tits and go on your way. That’s all he wants anyway. His parents have money, Lanny, come on. They can pay for things that I can’t.
I held my breath, thoughts tumbling like I’d stuck my head in the dryer.
She wasn’t here to help me. There had to be another reason.
As I held her wrists, she confirmed my suspicion. Her eyes began roving again: surfaces, doors, halls. Searching.
If she needed money and had no place to stay, she’d either gotten evicted again or taken money from someone and promised to pay them back, and hadn’t.
I thought of Aunt Cadence’s things in the attic.
In the spare bedrooms. The portraits on the walls, the crystal on the dresser, the antique carriage trunks at the foot of every bed.
Little things, big things, all worth money, that she could sell.
That was supposed to be auctioned, only now, I wouldn’t be auctioning it if I wasn’t selling the house.
All things she could get her hands on and steal if she was left alone.
There was no doubt in my mind that she would steal from me.
“How about this,” I offered. “I’ll give Dad a call and tell him you’re here. But I need to get you a room for the night because things are cramped.”
“Oh, hell, Lanny—cramped? Five rooms?”