Chapter 44
FORTY-FOUR
“I longed for one true friend; so I got a dog.”
—excerpt from the unpublished memoir,
Darling, I Must Say by Gloria Hayes
I didn’t feel quite so brave the next morning. Had I really stormed over to his house in the middle of the night, mauled him, and left?
Thankfully, it was Sunday, so there was no actual reason for me to see Abe today. I got up and mowed the lawn in the sticky morning heat and took a shower. When I was done, Mom had made a big stack of chocolate chip pancakes because she really was the best mom in the world.
“How was last night?” she asked, sitting across from me at our small kitchen table.
“It was good.” I’d told her I was going to the movie; I hadn’t told her, or anyone else, who I was going with.
“Did I hear you leave in the middle of the night?”
I froze for half a second before taking a drink of my orange juice. “I did. I forgot something in my car.”
Her smile was small and knowing. “Okay. I guess we’ll go with that.”
Last night, I’d been brave(ish) and maybe it was time to try that again.
Mom was the least judgmental person I knew.
She’d been through enough in her life to know that most things weren’t black and white.
Still, I’d always kept things from her. When I was younger, it was because she was always working, or tired from working, or stressed about how to make ends meet.
When I was older, she was recovering from a stroke and I didn’t want to be the source of more worry.
Mae had always stepped in and picked up the slack.
She was pretty good at keeping secrets, too, if I thought about it.
“Can I tell you something?” I said quickly before I changed my mind.
“You can tell me anything.” So simple.
“I’m not going to Austin in the fall.”
“Okay.” She took another bite of her pancakes.
“That’s it?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m your mom. I know you better than you think. There’s no way you’d want to go to school in Austin. Honestly, you’d make a terrible therapist.”
“I should be offended but you’re right.” I pushed around a bit of pancake on my plate. “The thing is that I don’t have a plan for fall. I don’t know what I’m doing.” I held my breath, waiting for her reaction.
She studied me. “Okay.”
“That’s it, just okay?”
“Well, honey, what else should I say? You’re an adult.
You have a job. You pay your bills. You’re smart.
Some people take a little longer to figure out their path.
Not everyone can be Mae. As soon as she figured out what a librarian was, she wanted to be one.
But you aren’t Mae and I don’t expect you to act like her. ”
“How do you always know the right thing to say?”
She laughed quietly. “Many, many years of making mistakes and learning from them. You’ll learn from yours, too. I’m not worried. You have a heart of gold. I mean, what young person would keep going back to a nursing home for years to volunteer when they didn’t have to? You care for those people.”
My mouth dropped open. “You know about that, too?”
“You do know where you live, right? Besides one of the nursing aides there is in my book club. She keeps me updated since you won’t.” She peered at me over the top of her coffee mug. “Are we going to talk about Abe now?”
“Do you know all my secrets?”
She grinned. “I still have never figured out why you snuck out of your room in the middle of the night in high school.”
“Trust me, it’s not the exciting story you think it is.” I’d only done it once and that was because Kayla Collins, who I’d gone to school with my whole life, called me in the middle of the night. She was so drunk I could smell her breath over the phone. She begged me to pick her up from a party.
I’d only been fifteen and not technically in possession of a legal driver’s license.
It had taken forever to get Kayla home. We’d had to stop every five minutes so she could puke on the side of the road.
Getting her from the car into her house and keeping her quiet at the same time had taken every ounce of my patience.
The next time I saw her at school, she’d acted like she didn’t know me.
“For what it’s worth, I like Abe a lot. He’s a good guy,” Mom said.
“The age difference doesn’t concern you?”
She huffed, her expression hardening. “Your father was less than a year older than me and you know how that turned out.” She did have a point. “How did he like the plant?”
“How? How do you know these things?”
She winked. “Mom magic.”