Chapter 19
T omas called in his order to Hola! and stopped to pick it up before going to Fiona’s.
The restaurant was beginning to pick up with the dinner rush, but it was a smoothly run operation, and he found his mother at her usual spot, the back booth, where she did paperwork and kept her eye on things.
He kissed her on the top of the head before sliding in across from her.
“Hello, sweetheart.” She beamed up at him, pushing aside her laptop. “Your order will be ready soon.”
Tomas nodded absently, toying with a stack of papers on the table. Louisa moved them out of his reach. “I have those in order. Don’t mess them up.”
He raised his hands in surrender and poured himself a glass of water from the carafe in the middle of the table.
Sitting back, he let his mother’s cheerful chatter flow over him.
She shared news of the restaurant staff, the car Carlos was currently working on, and the health of various relatives.
Nothing that required him to participate.
But she was a mother whose son had brought a woman home for dinner.
“Fiona is lovely,” she said, glancing up at him.
“Yeah.”
“Then why do you look unhappy?”
And there it was. Straight to the point, but laced with concern.
He looked off to the side, watching a family being seated at a table, laughing at something the young hostess had said, then back to his mother. “I overheard Fiona’s mother say that I’m beneath Fiona because I’m an uneducated Mexican.”
Louisa sat back, muttering in Spanish, but didn’t look shocked. “And Fiona?”
“She kicked her mother out of her office. Doesn’t want to see her again.”
Louisa clucked in dismay. “Poor Fiona.”
“Yeah.” Tomas exhaled, catching his mother’s sympathetic glance.
“I don’t understand and I don’t know what to do.
I mean, I know Fiona can do better than me.
” He held up a hand to prevent his mother from interrupting.
“And not because I didn’t go to college or that I’m Mexican, but because she is caring, dedicated, forgiving, classy, beautiful, and just so… .”
“Perfect?”
“Yeah,” he breathed out.
“She does have flaws.” It was Louisa’s turn to hold up her hand.
“Everyone does. But she seems to be perfect for you. She pushes you, and I like that. She draws you out and doesn’t put you down.
You’re a better person when she’s around.
Carlos likes her. Your sisters like her.
I like her. I hope you can make this work. ”
“Thanks, Mom. But I don’t know how to help her with her mother. I didn’t expect her to be a racist. They’re immigrants like us.”
Louisa shook her head and sighed. Fingering the small cross she wore around her neck, she said, “When I was in school, maybe thirteen, there was a kid who lived down the street from me. His name was Harvey. He had terrible acne, and he was tall and gawky, and walked with these long bouncing steps. My girlfriends and I would walk behind him and pick on him. We’d call him names, mock him. We were thoughtless and cruel.”
Crossing his arms, Tomas studied his mother. “That doesn’t sound like you.”
She smiled wryly. “Never underestimate the capacity of teenage girls to be mean. When I got older, I was ashamed and wanted to apologize, but he moved away.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Have you ever done something you regretted and wished you could take back?”
Tomas snorted. That pretty much described his twenties.
Raising her eyebrows at his response, Louisa leaned forward, folding her hands together on top of the table. “I bet Linh Han is feeling that way right now.”
He shrugged, unwilling to let it go; there were the words themselves, and the fact that she’d said them to Fiona.
“I think that water pitcher has more warmth than Linh Han. But that doesn’t mean she doesn’t care about her daughter,” Louisa said.
The restaurant was filling up and getting louder. Tomas leaned in to hear his mother more clearly.
“She is a proud, determined woman whose daughter is not following the path she wants her to.”
“She married Fiona off to Eddie for the business.”
Louisa’s normally smiling mouth set in a firm line. “Yeah, that’s not right. But still?—”
“No buts, Mom. Her pride comes before her family. And this time she’s gone too far. She’s hurt Fiona too many times, and I don’t know if Fiona will forgive her.”
An unhappy silence descended. A waitress brought over Tomas’s order, and he shifted to get out of the booth. Louisa put a hand on his arm to stop him.
“I believe that Linh Han loves her daughter and regrets what she said. If she apologizes, will you forgive her?”
He wanted to confront the old witch. The words themselves were true, but the way she’d used them to put him down in Fiona’s eyes, the way she made her daughter feel small, could he forgive her for that?
Frowning, he bent down to wrap an arm around his mother.
“I don’t know, Mom. Maybe.” She hugged him back, and he picked up the food and headed to the exit.
Securing the food in his truck, he closed the door and nearly tripped. “What the—” Winding around his feet was a small black cat with a white splotch on its nose. It sat on its haunches, looked at the truck, and looked at Tomas.
“You better get out of the way,” he said, and went around to the driver’s side. The cat followed him. “Scram!” He made a shooing motion, but the cat just stared.
“I think he likes you.” Stevie stood by the restaurant’s back door having a smoke.
“Whose cat is it?” Tomas asked.
“It’s a stray,” Stevie replied. “Showed up a few days ago, and your mom started feeding it.”
“Is she going to take it to a shelter?”
Stevie shook her head. “It’s still a kitten and won’t let anyone near it.”
The cat strolled toward Tomas and wove between his legs, looking up at him.
Stevie snorted. “Nobody but you, apparently.”
“A stray, huh?” He eyed the cat.
“Yeah. We get them sometimes. They don’t stick around for long, though. They get hit by a car or eaten by a coyote.” She flicked a hand to indicate the greenbelt behind the restaurant. “Unless someone were to give it a home.”
Tomas shot her a narrow-eyed look, then stared at the cat. It blinked slowly and purred. He sighed. “Got a box?”
H ands full, he used his foot to tap at the door of Fiona’s apartment.
A frown creased Fiona’s forehead when she opened it.
“How much food did you bring?” she asked, eyeing the box.
She’d changed out of what Tomas considered her uniform.
He knew from having seen the inside of her closet that she had half a dozen skirts and jackets in muted shades and a dozen coordinating blouses.
Now, she wore navy leggings and a long, loose, silky, wine-colored top.
She was barefoot, and her hair was in a messy bun on the top of her head.
He put the box on the table and the bag of food on the counter before taking her in his arms. “Do you have allergies?”
“Not to any foods.”
“Animals?”
“No.”
“Good,” he said. Kissing her lightly, he let her go and opened the box.
The cat poked its head out and looked at Tomas indignantly before turning to Fiona. It meowed and leaped out of the box.
“Ohh,” Fiona crooned. “Who is this?” She extended a hand, and the cat sniffed it, butting its head against her fingers.
“I don’t know. It’s a stray that’s been hanging around the restaurant and needs a home.”
Sitting on the table, the cat arched its neck as if inviting Fiona to scratch its chin. She did, and the cat closed its eyes and purred. Fiona was practically purring herself, cooing, her face lit up with a smile of pure delight. The cat turned its head and licked her hand.
Fiona giggled. “It feels like sandpaper.”
For a stray, the cat looked pretty healthy, with bright eyes and a gleaming coat. It lavished affection on Fiona, alternately licking and rubbing its head against her hand.
“Are you keeping it at your place or taking it to your parents’ house?”
“I thought, maybe you’d like it.”
“Really?” He hadn’t thought it possible for her smile to get bigger.
She scooped up the cat and sank to the floor, holding it against her chest. The cat dug its claws into her shirt as it stretched up to nuzzle her jaw.
Fiona nuzzled it right back before grinning at Tomas.
Tension leaked out of him as he sat beside them.
It looked like he’d done something right today.
A while later, he cleared away the remains of the meal while Fiona sat at the table talking quietly to the cat and looking better than she had earlier in the day.
He was rinsing plates in the sink when a tap came at the door.
He couldn’t see who it was and looked over to Fiona, who made a come in gesture.
Wiping his hands on a towel, he stepped over to the peninsula and leaned against the countertop.
Two men entered, and it took him a moment to recognize Fiona’s brother Joseph, but he didn’t know the other man, though he looked familiar.
“Hi,” Joseph said, hand extended. “Tomas, right?”
Tomas gripped his hand. “Yeah. Nice to meet you.” He turned to the other man, who was Vietnamese as well. Not as tall as Joseph, he was casually dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, a contrast to Joseph’s slacks and button-down shirt.
“Andy Tran. I’m the pastor at your mother’s church.” He shook hands with Tomas and turned to Fiona. “I hope we’re not interrupting.”
Rising from the table, Fiona shook her head. “Not at all.”
Seeing her tight expression, Tomas moved around the counter to stand behind her, ready to take her back with whatever happened.
“You got a cat,” Joseph said.
“I did,” Fiona replied, holding it against her shoulder. “What’s up? I wasn’t expecting you.”