Chapter 11
Dakota
A couple of days later, I'm parking my parents driveway, and flipping the hood up on my jacket as I run through the rain that's coming down. When I get to the back porch, my dad holds the door open. "Get on in here."
It takes me a few minutes to shake the water off, and when I'm done, I toe off my shoes and then walk into the kitchen. Mom is standing at the counter making a sandwich, so I swoop in, and kiss her on the cheek. "Hey Mama."
"Hey yourself. Haven't seen you much in a while."
I try not to take the words to heart. She wants to see me all the time and sometimes I just can't swing it. "I'm sorry. Things have been crazy at work." I don't tell her that I'm spending a good portion of my time with Molly, too.
"I know, and you're an adult. You have an entire life without me."
"Mama, that's not all it is. I'm doing some improvements on my house." Well I was before I started spending time with Molly. "I'm still decompressing slightly from the undercover op that Levi and I went on. Being a full-fledged adult is busy," I laugh.
She makes a sound that's somewhere between a hum and a sigh, and slides the second half of the sandwich onto a plate and pushes it toward me without asking if I want it.
That's my mom in a nutshell. She's not going to say she missed me with her words if she can say it with food instead, and I have learned over the years not to argue with the method.
I pull out a stool at the counter and sit down.
Dad has settled himself at the kitchen table with the newspaper, which he still gets delivered in print because he does not trust anything that only exists on a screen, and the rain is picking up against the windows.
It's a slow Alabama afternoon that's good for nothing except being inside somewhere warm, and relaxing with friends or family.
"How's the house coming along?" Dad asks without looking up from his paper.
"Slow," I admit. "I started pulling up the floor in the second bedroom, and it's in worse shape than I thought. I need to get back in there and figure out what I'm dealing with before I do anything else."
"You need a hand with it?"
"Maybe. I'll let you know once I see what the subfloor looks like underneath.
" My dad is the type of man who has never paid someone else to do something he can do himself, and he passed that down to me whether I wanted it or not.
There's something satisfying about it, even when it's inconvenient.
"I'll take you over sometime and get your eyes on it. "
He nods, still reading, and that's settled.
Mom finishes whatever she was working on at the counter and then leans her elbows on it across from me, and I know that look well enough to know something is coming.
She's got the same patient expression she used to get when she was waiting for me to admit I'd done something wrong, when I was a kid and she already knew the answer and was just giving me the opportunity to tell her the truth before she told it to me herself.
I pick up the sandwich half and take a bite and wait.
"Lucy said something interesting the other night," she starts.
There it is. "Lucy says a lot of interesting things."
"She does." Mom tilts her head. "This particular interesting thing was about you and Molly Harrison."
I chew slowly and set the sandwich back down, and I do what I always do when I need a second to think, which is to reach over and take a long drink of whatever is closest. In this case it's the glass of water sitting near the edge of the counter, which Mom put there at some point without me noticing, because she always anticipates. "Is that right?"
"That's right." She's watching me with those eyes that have never once in my entire life missed a single thing. "She seemed to think that the two of you might have something going on. Said something about the way you look at her." She pauses. "I told Lucy that you and Molly have always been close."
"That's true," I say, which is not a lie. But both of us probably know that we’re skirting around the issue.
"And then Lucy said, and I'm quoting here, that nobody looks at their close friend the way you look at Molly." She raises both eyebrows. "Those were her words."
My little sister is going to be the death of me, and I genuinely cannot even be mad about it because she is not wrong and she has never once in her life been able to keep an interesting observation to herself for longer than forty-eight hours.
It's both her greatest strength and the thing that absolutely exhausts me.
I drag a hand through my damp hair and look at my mom, and she looks back at me, and we do this for a moment.
"I'm going to plead the fifth on that one," I tell her. "For right now."
She pulls a face that I can’t recognize.
Not surprise, not really, more like a quiet confirmation of something she already suspected.
She doesn't push it. That's not her style.
She's never been the type to pull something out of you before you're ready to give it, and it's one of the things I respect most about her, even if it also means she has more patience than I know what to do with sometimes.
"Okay," she says simply.
"Okay?" I look at her.
"Okay, you're pleading the fifth, and I'm not going to interrogate you." She picks up a dish towel and folds it over the edge of the sink. "You're a grown man. You don't owe me the details of your personal life."
Dad turns a page of his newspaper. If he's listening, he's giving no indication, which tracks for him.
"I'll say this," Mom continues, and her voice is a little softer. She’s no longer fishing for information, now she’s just trying to smooth things over.
"I hope that whoever it is you're spending your time with, and however it is that you're spending it, you're treating each other well. That's all I've ever wanted for you. I don’t need the particulars, I just need to know you’re being treated well, and you’re being a gentleman. "
I look at her for a second, this woman who drove me to every tutoring session I ever had and never once made me feel stupid for needing them, who sat at kitchen tables just like this one and helped me sound out words when I was ashamed to let anyone else see me struggle, who has shown up for me in every way a mother can show up for a kid who didn't always make it easy.
She means it. She always means exactly what she says, and never anything extra.
The corner of my mouth pulls up before I can stop it. "If it turns out that Molly and I are together," I say, keeping my voice non-committal, "then I can promise you that I'm treating her very well."
Mom goes still for just a second, and then the smile that comes across her face is the real one, not the polite one she gives people at church or the restrained one she uses when she's trying to be appropriate, but the full one, the one that gets to her eyes and stays there. She points at me once. "Good."
"That's all you're going to say?"
"What else would I say? You're a grown man and she is a grown woman and you've known each other most of your lives." She waves a hand like the rest of it is self-evident. "I've got eyes, Dakota. I've had eyes for a while now."
"Does that mean the eyebrow you raised at me when I dropped Lucy off the other night wasn't subtle at all?"
"It was not meant to be subtle." She laughs, and it's the same laugh I grew up with. "I was just waiting to see if you'd come over and talk to me about it yourself."
"I'm here, ain’t I?"
"You are," she agrees, and she reaches over and pats my hand the way she's done since I was a kid. "Now eat your sandwich."
I eat the sandwich.
Dad refolds his newspaper and sets it down on the table and looks over at me. "She's a good girl," he says, which from my father is approximately the equivalent of a ten-minute speech from anyone else.
"She is," I agree.
He nods once, picks the paper back up, and goes back to reading, and that's the end of his contribution to this conversation. That's my dad. He says the thing that matters and then steps back out of it, and you can either take it or leave it, but he'll only say it once.
The rain gets heavier now, drumming against the back porch roof in a steady rhythm, and the kitchen smells like coffee, and Lucy's backpack is slung over one of the chairs at the table the way it always is, and everything in this house is exactly the way it has always been.
I've spent a lot of time in this kitchen over the years, and it has looked like this for as long as I can remember, and there is a kind of peace that comes with that which I don't think I appreciated enough when I was younger. I'm trying to do better about it now.
I stay for another hour and a half, through the rest of the rain and the tail end of Mom's afternoon shows and a second half of sandwich that she cuts for me without being asked, and when I finally get up to go she walks me to the back door and hugs me the way she always does. It always makes everything feel better.
"Come back sooner next time," she says into my shoulder.
"Yes ma'am," I tell her, and I mean it.
The rain has slowed to a drizzle when I get to my truck, and I sit there for a second before I start it. I pull my phone out of my jacket pocket and open my texts, and I type Molly's name before I've even fully decided what I want to say.
D: Just left my parents. Mom knows. I didn’t confirm it.
The three dots appear almost immediately.
M: How bad?
D: She said she hopes we're treating each other well.
There's a pause that's longer than usual, and then:
M: That's very her.
D: I told her if we were together, I was treating you very well.
Another pause.
M: Dakota.
D: Yeah?
M: You really are.
A slow smile works its way across my face, and I start the truck, heading for home.