Chapter Twenty-Two
Once Luna’s car was safely parked in the garage, she made her way into the house and found it surprisingly quiet.
“Mom?” she called out from the bottom of the stairs.
There wasn’t an answer.
She called again on the level of the bedrooms, still nothing.
The guest room still had her mother’s belongings tucked in one corner, and a messed-up bed with clothes tossed on top.
“Mom?” she yelled again.
“Up here.”
The door to the attic was open a few inches, letting the cold seep into the house.
Luna heard Midnight before seeing her mother.
Karen sat among a pile of boxes, several opened and the contents spread around her. “What are you looking for?” Luna asked as she reached down to pick up her cat.
“I’m just finding old pictures.” Karen lifted one and waved it in the air.
“This must have been right after we moved back from California.”
The picture was taken in front of the house with Nana, Luna, and her siblings.
“Did you take the picture?”
“I don’t remember. I’m not in any of these.”
Luna looked at the photograph. There was a huge maple tree in the front yard that wasn’t there now. “I don’t remember that tree.”
“You wouldn’t. You were probably three when a big chunk of it fell off in a storm and what was left threatened to fall on the house. Mom complained for weeks about what it cost to have it removed.”
Karen kept sifting through pictures.
Midnight squirmed out of Luna’s arms.
Another stack of pictures, taken maybe a year or so later, included her mother, Nana, and a man Luna didn’t know. “Who was that?”
“Uhmmm. That was Larry. He was the husband before Joe.”
Luna sat on the edge of a plastic box and walked down memory lane. “What happened with him?”
“Who knows. Mom always thought the men in her life were cheaters.”
Another photograph was passed, much like the one before with Christmas in full swing. “Were we still living here?” she asked.
“Yeah. We didn’t move out until you were almost four.”
Luna smiled. It was moments like this that made her feel like her mom was like any other. Sharing old memories and stories of a time before Luna had any real memory of what was happening in her life.
“Remember Levi?” Karen asked.
“The Lab?”
Karen handed Luna a picture of the dog they had back in her elementary school days. “Best dog ever.”
Luna smiled at the image of Levi lying across both her and Ash at a very young age. “Whatever happened to him?”
“He got old. He came to us old, though. He had the smelliest farts.”
That made Luna laugh.
Karen stopped shuffling through the images and sighed as she studied one. From the smile in her face, it held a piece of her heart.
“What are you looking at?” Luna asked.
Karen shrugged and turned the picture around.
It was her and Paul.
Luna lost her smile. All humor and warmth fled in an instant.
“I really thought he loved me,” Karen said.
A knot developed in Luna’s stomach.
Karen looked at the image again.
“He was an asshole,” Luna reminded her, her voice flat.
Her mother didn’t agree . . . didn’t disagree. “You have to admit, I did pick good-looking men.”
So much for quiet, wistful moments with Mom.
Luna set the pictures in her hand aside and stood. “I have some work to do.”
Karen barely looked up as Luna walked away.
Midnight followed her down the stairs and into her bedroom.
“I pick good-looking men,” Luna muttered to herself. “You’re just as mental as he was.”
Luna and Miley stood in the yard watching what amounted to a conveyor belt carry bundles of roofing materials to the highest peaks of the house.
Brian had two guys with him as they moved around on the steep pitches of the roofline as easily as Luna would walk up a flight of stairs.
“How do they not fall off?” Miley asked.
“I have no idea.”
“That would be a total trauma code if they did. That’s at least thirty feet.”
Luna smirked. “Let’s hope they drank their coffee this morning.”
Karen joined them wearing an oversize bathrobe that belonged to Ash. “That’s a fun sound to wake up to.”
“They can come at three a.m. for all I care. This needs to get done,” Luna told her.
“What is this costing you? It can’t be cheap.”
“It’s not,” Luna said.
They were all quiet for a moment.
Then Karen said, “A new car and a new roof in the same week. I should have been an accountant.”
“You’re never too old to go back to school,” Miley said.
“I have three kids. I’m not going back to school now. You guys can take turns caring for me when I’m old.”
Luna felt an invisible fist punch her stomach. “You’re not old, Mom.”
“I feel old.” Karen opened her mouth wide with a yawn. “I need coffee,” she said and walked away.
“Your mom thinks you’re rich,” Miley said quietly once Karen disappeared into the house.
“Compared to her, I am.”
“Why didn’t you tell her that the insurance company is paying for this? Maybe she wouldn’t act so entitled.”
Luna stepped back to get a better look at the men on the roof. “She used to brag about one day slipping and falling in a Walmart so she could sue them and get a boatload of money. If she thought my insurance company would pay her off in some way, there’s no telling what she’d pull.”
“You really think she’d do that?” Miley asked in disbelief.
“She was ogling a picture of Paul yesterday. Looked like she wanted to kiss it. Yes, I think she’d do that.”
Miley started to walk away. “I need to call my mom and let her know I love her,” she said.
At least Karen sparked others to be grateful for what they had in their lives.
Later that night Luna took her mom to the grocery store for a few things . . . mainly cigarettes. And since her mother came without transportation of her own, Luna could either drive her mother around or loan her the Lexus.
Being her mother’s taxi it was.
They skimmed through the supermarket, grabbing snack food Luna and Miley never ate, but that would make Karen happy. And the ingredients for “family favorite” recipes Karen insisted on making.
At the checkout, Karen pulled out her wallet.
Which surprised the hell out of Luna.
Then she saw the card.
A government EBT card.
Luna looked around her to see if anyone she knew saw them. “I’ll get this. You save that for yourself,” Luna told her mother while she pulled out her credit card.
“Are you sure? I don’t mind.”
“You can buy your own cigarettes and the vodka,” Luna said. She wasn’t walking out of a grocery store using EBT money and loading the groceries in a brand-new Lexus. That was wrong on way too many levels.
“You can’t buy cigarettes and alcohol with this.”
Luna tried to smile at the teller.
The woman behind the register didn’t seem to care.
Luna slid the vodka aside. “I’ve got this.”
The woman removed the price of the vodka and totaled up the bill.
Karen was reduced to paying for her “dirty habit” with her own cash.
That was a line Luna had no intention of crossing.
Luna still wondered what her mother’s endgame would be. A morbid thought for sure, but one she couldn’t stop herself from thinking. Would it be cancer? Liver failure . . . an accident?
A man?
Luna highly doubted that her mother would pass from “natural causes.”
As they walked out of the store, her mother said she needed to pass by an ATM for cigarette money.
Even though Luna agreed to stop at a bank, her expression must have given some of her thoughts away.
“I know you hate my smoking,” Karen said.
“I didn’t say anything.” Luna backed her car out of the parking lot and took joy in the clarity of the car’s backup camera.
“You don’t have to say anything. You still give me that look whenever you see me smoke.”
“I probably give everyone I see smoking the same look.”
“No.” Karen’s voice had taken on a defensive tone. “You save that for me.”
“Do you want me to pretend like I like it?” Luna asked.
“No. But you don’t have to be so judgy. It’s not like I haven’t tried to quit. It’s hard.”
“I imagine it is. Anything worth doing takes effort,” Luna said.
“See, there you go. I’ve tried.”
“Can we not argue about this, please?” Luna asked.
“You used to come home from school and lecture me about what they taught you that day. Give me statistics on how long I’d live and the likelihood of me needing oxygen by the time I’m sixty.”
“I was good at math back then, too.” Luna attempted to laugh and make light of where her mother was headed. “Clearly you’re beating the odds.”
Karen sighed. “I didn’t expect you to buy my cigarettes. I would never ask. You didn’t have to point it out in front of the teller.”
So that was what this was all about. “If I embarrassed you, I’m sorry. It was not my intention.”
That was what her mother needed to hear.
The tension in Karen’s body eased. “I really am doing better.”
“I’m glad,” Luna said aloud. I really don’t care. The battle had long since been lost, and worrying about her mother’s health was no longer a priority.
“I have to work tomorrow,” Luna said, changing the subject. “I’ll be leaving early and probably won’t be home until the afternoon.”
“I thought you worked from home.”
“I do. But I’m working with a team on a case. I asked Brian not to bother you. If any questions about the roof come up, he’ll call me.”
“Is Miley going to be home?”
“She isn’t working but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have plans,” Luna said.
“I don’t need anyone to entertain me.”
Yeah, but leaving her at the house without anyone else there itched a part of Luna’s spine that made her squirm.
When she’d first moved into the house, she saw her nana everywhere. And Karen.
All of that eventually faded and the place felt like hers. Her responsibility.
Home.
Something she could depend on, that would be there for her. That no one could take away.
Somehow her mother being there without Luna threatened that security.
Or maybe she associated her mother with a lack of security and that caused her anxiety.
Luna pulled into her bank’s parking lot, and her mother hopped out to use the ATM.
Luna’s jaw hurt. She noticed because the second her mother was out of her orbit, she felt it relax.