Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Stone
I barrel through the next several weeks with my head down and mouth shut.
My lawyers kept busy sending cease and desist letters and taking down all mentions of my scuffle at the Merc online, and I pulled extra hours on Rome’s ranch to prove to the town, and maybe to myself, that I could go weeks straight without ending up front page news.
Fully apprised of the situation with my mother, the board agreed to my hiatus in Falcon Haven, so long as I kept up with emails and necessary reviews.
Millspace Pharmaceuticals is another matter, the board threatening to replace me if I don’t return in three weeks’ time.
Work isn’t overtaking my thoughts, however. Noa’s cool dismissal during a weak moment where I let my heart bleed in front of her affected me more than I let on as I politely greeted her in the mornings and acknowledged her in the evenings before bunking on the living room couch.
There’s an overtly raw feeling in Noa’s disapproval of my choices.
Almost like I harbor the need to impress her and prove my success has made me a good man, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
That I’m so much better than the immature boy who flew to the other side of the states on a hell-bent dream.
That I’m sorry.
I finish drying the breakfast dishes, staring out through the window above the sink and into the forest beyond. A fawn pokes her head out, sniffing cautiously, then darts back into the protective brush after she senses danger.
“Good plan,” I say to her.
“Hi, honeybear.” Ma’s voice comes from behind me. I turn.
She strides into the kitchen with a healthy glow to her cheeks. “You’re looking well.”
“It’s those pancakes Noa left for us. They’ve given me the kind of sugar rush that needs an outlet. Come with me?”
Noa’s preparation of homemade pancakes this morning, burn free and delicious, before she left could mean she’s more calculated and cutthroat than I am.
I set the last dish on the drying rack and hold out my elbow. “Where may I escort you, madam?”
Ma smiles. “So cheeky and handsome. It’s such a lovely fall day. Let’s bike around the neighborhood and see what kind of Halloween decorations the neighbors are trying to pass for Thanksgiving, so they don’t have to take them down.”
Concern lifts my brow. “Are you sure you’re up for physical activity?”
“If you finish that sentence with I don’t think you should , you will force me to explain to everyone that my son’s body is the new scarecrow in my backyard.”
“Point made. Let’s go for a bike ride.”
In the way mothers do, Ma has forgiven me for the Merc incident. The last thing I want is to cause her stress, so I guide her through the foyer and out of the house, grabbing our scarves and her puffy down jacket along the way.
The tires of our old bikes in the garage need air and I use the hand pump to get them ready while Ma zips up her coat and ties a kerchief around her thinning hair.
Her expression is more alive than I’ve noticed lately, and I realize, with a pang in my heart, that I’d do anything to keep it that way, including taking her for a ride without the permission of her doc or nurse, and despite not getting on a bicycle since I was a teenager.
Bikes ready, I swing onto the seat, wincing slightly when my groin rubs up against my custom pants. I make a mental note that my life is more Wrangler than Tom Ford these days.
Ma gets on her baby blue Cruiser like she never left it, gripping the handles and zipping down the drive with her plastic flower basket leading the way. With a happy scoff, I follow her on my old, fire engine red Schwinn, wobbling, scraping the soles of my loafers, but then finding rhythm.
The bike tour is a welcome distraction, considering Ma’s clinical trial ended the week before and results are due any day.
She doesn’t want to talk about it and neither do I.
We keep to mundane topics while meandering through our street, commenting on the pumpkins, scarecrows, shrunken zombie heads, and (I grimace) hay bales.
“The neighbors are going more harvest chic this year,” Ma muses while we cruise past the corner house with an impressive gourd display.
I make a noncommittal sound in my throat to let her know I’m listening.
Noa made breakfast for the house, then rushed out to take care of her other patients with an odd pep in her step.
Did she have a date tonight? She had to be looking forward to something, what with the reinvigorated brightness to her jaded eyes, a cascade of sunlight I was all too responsible for taking away.
She was different this morning than all others preceding it.
I’d taken to studying her and predicting her thoughts rather than asking directly.
She wanted me to leave her alone, so I did, but that didn’t mean I had to stop watching her.
Noa is an irresistible force, a reckoning of my soul I hadn’t considered I’d have to face when moving back here.
I figured she’d be happily married with kids or living in Paris as an in-demand private chef.
Last thing I expected was to find her taking care of my mother.
And now she’s moved in. We avoid each other in that mature way adults do when they don’t want to talk about their problems, but we’re still forced to see each other every day.
She’s a constant, like a cut inside my cheek I keep tonguing to prevent from healing because I’m addicted to the textured ache.
“I, for one, prefer to scare the children and make them work for the turkey feast they’ll no doubt inhale in minutes while I worked for hours on it,” Ma says.
“Hmm?” I look across the road at my mother.
“You heard me,” she says primly, her eyes ahead but with a sly slant to them. “Back in the day, we had the scariest house on the block. You remember?”
“I mostly recall turning our home into the Boo Radley house because I lived in it.”
“That too. But those kids loved it when you handed out candy to them. It meant they got to meet the rebel of Falcon Haven.”
“C’mon, Ma.” I gently rib her. The wide-eyed kids I begrudgingly handed candy to are the same adults who poo-poo me when they see me in town today. “Maybe that’d be funny if those kids hadn’t grown into the assholes they are now.”
“This town isn’t full of assholes, dear. You only think that way because you still have the vision of how it was when you were a boy and thought the entire world was against you. This place is healing, if you let it be. Quiet, peaceful, friendly and involved. Close-knit and loyal.”
“That’s for damned sure,” I mutter as we turn into the neighboring street.
Ma rides closer until we’re side-by-side.
The wind paints red circles on her cheeks and her blue eyes are clear, the colored leaves crackling under our tires.
I spent a long morning corralling Rome’s cattle before the even the sun woke up.
I’m exhausted and should nap, but I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be than accompanying my mother through the quiet streets of her neighborhood.
Maybe Ma’s right. This town could heal if I let it. And it’s not wrong to hope it heals her.
“I bet we can come up with a nice, traumatizing front lawn display for the kids,” she says. I chuckle.
“You missed your chance on Halloween.” Ma wasn’t up to any Halloween celebrations, so Noa and I kept it quiet with the lights dimmed. “But I could call in a few favors, get some props that have been retired.”
“Sounds fabulous.” Ma beams. “You and Noa put your heads together, come up with something grand.”
My brows lower and my speed slows. “Ma.”
“Yes, dear?”
“I know what you’re doing.”
“You know nothing of the sort. She lives with us now. She deserves to be involved in the holidays.”
“What about her family?”
“She has no one besides that Carly, and we all know that girl is flightier than a bird changing seasons.”
“That can’t be true. What about her mother?”
Noa’s father died when she was a baby in a car accident, but I always remembered Lynn Shaw to more than make up for his absence.
Ma reaches over and pats my arm. “That’s a story for her to tell. For now, I’m glad she’s with us and I want to make her as comfortable as possible in our house. She needs to feel like she belongs.”
I ask wryly, “Are you saying I’m making her feel less than belonged?”
“You do have a talent for that.”
“I’m making up for it.” I lean forward on the handlebars. “I’m staying out of her way, letting her live her life and giving her the space to take care of you.”
“If you think that’s doing the right thing,” Ma says, “you are so far from reading women, you’re in outer space.”
I frown. “She told me in no uncertain terms to let her be.”
“Yes, and did she also tell you she didn’t want you as a partner anymore?”
“A partner in what?”
Ma smacks me. “In the cooking class! Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten. Noa’s been bouncing around the house for days, looking forward to the first session tonight, as much as she’s trying to contain it.”
I’d completely put the deal we’d made at the back of my head, what with so much else to unpack.
“Shit. I mean, shoot,” I amend at Ma’s sideways glare. “It slipped my mind, but before you counter, I have no plans for tonight and can still do it.”
Ma nods with more confirmation than required. “Exactly as I thought.”
We reach the end of the street. Ma’s breath comes out shorter and I casually turn us around, heading back to the house as if it were my idea. She’d never admit the need to go home. “What exactly are you thinking, Ma?”
“Noa didn’t fire you from the sous chef position. That’s a sign if I ever saw one.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m hardly a sous chef. More like I’m her only option, and if she wants the slight chance at pursing her passion in this town, she has to tolerate my presence.”
“She could very well tell you to bugger off, but she didn’t.” She glances at me sideways before adding, “if you can’t read the room, then there is no hope for you, son.”
I give a befuddled shake of my head. “If she wants me to go, then I will.”
Though, I can’t disregard the swell of relief at the answer to why Noa’s so excited these days. It’s not another man. It’s cooking. I’m shocked she’d want me around, but I’m not about to bring up our sore spot and re-hash the pain that was the night of the Merc incident.
It’d be a pleasant change from the wake up before sunrise, clean manure, go home and eat breakfast, nap, talk to Ma, repeat. If she wants to put aside our emotions like mature adults, then I’ll be her vegetable cutter or oven opener or whatever she needs.
How hard could it be?
“That’s all I’ll say on the subject,” Ma says. “Oh look, a hill.”
“Ma—”
She turns left before I can stop her, flying down the same dip of roadway I flew over when I was a kid, both on a bike, on a winter sled, and on the rubber of my soles when fleeing cranky Mr. Jenkins after throwing manure on his lawn.
Ma takes similar flight, releasing her handlebars and holding her arms out wide. I come to the top of the hill and throw one foot on the ground and letting it scrape along with my back wheel until I’m at a standstill.
Ma’s kerchief comes off, billowing in the wind that carries her laughter into my ears.
I don’t chastise her when she has trouble pedaling back up the hill. When I meet her at the bottom, I give her a high-five.