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Gia pulled a knife from the block and a cutting board from the whole shelf of them—Bo had made Mom like two dozen over the years—and started chopping heirloom tomatoes. Mom stood beside her and chopped onions. And, of course, she was impervious to their tear-inducing properties. Lilli Lunden did not cry, not even over onions.
Gia hated to cry, too, but she was not impervious to onions.
“Talk to me, cara,” Mom said. “Something’s going on with you, and we need to talk it through before it gets any bigger. What’s wrong?”
While that was a surprisingly measured approach to the topic, Gia was irritated anyway. Something wasn’t going on with her. Something was going on with them. They were the ones who changed her entire life here at what was supposed to be home, and done it without even a hint to her.
“You’re wrong,” she lied. “Nothing’s going on. I’m fine.”
She knew there was no chance in hell that would work, but for a few seconds she thought maybe miracles happened, and Mom would let it drop. She chopped onions and said nothing, and Gia chopped tomatoes and wondered what it would mean if Mom really meant to let it go. Lilli Lunden didn’t let shit go any more than she let onions make her cry.
But eight or ten chops later, Mom’s knife hit her cutting board like she meant to cut the board itself in half. Then she dropped the knife and grabbed the counter, letting her head drop in a perfect pose of abject frustration. “Goddammit, Gia. What is wrong? Why are you slumping around here like somebody stole your lunch money? You’re avoiding us, you’re going out with the fucking Jasper girls instead of hanging with us, and you brought a patch home for a goddamn one-night stand right where your father can see. You’re home, home to stay for the first time in years, and we’ve all been looking forward to it for months. But it’s very clear that you have not been. What the fuck is going on with you?”
Ah. There was the Mom Gia had expected when she was summoned.
She was too close to the onions. It had to be the onions. It wasn’t Mom’s accusatory tone. It certainly wasn’t her mention of Zaxx (asshole), who maybe had started out as a one-night stand but she’d thought had turned into something much more real, and then turned out to be even worse than a one-nighter. It wasn’t her ambivalent feelings about her whole homecoming, either. She’d been feeling those for days now without the urge to cry.
So it was obviously the stupid onions. Nothing else.
Trying to force back the sudden spate of tears, Gia blinked, but that only sped the traitorous saltwater on its way. She kept her attention on her own cutting board and continued chopping tomatoes. She did not answer, and Mom stared daggers but said nothing more.
Until a tear dropped onto the cutting board. Then Gia felt her mom come closer, felt her arm slip across her back, her hand hook around her shoulder. “Gia. Cara mia.” Her voice was soft now, warm and nurturing. Like a mom, not a rival. “Please talk to me.”
For the past forty-eight hours, Gia had been trying to push down all the disorienting, painful feelings of her homecoming gone wrong. Back in this rinky-dink town after years with Chicago right at her fingertips. Rejected by her family, ghosted by the first guy in a long while she’d thought she could sincerely want to be with. And on top of all that rejection, she was ashamed of herself, too, feeling guilty for not being grateful for the manner in which she’d been kicked out.
For forty-eight hours, she’d done a pretty good job of climbing over all that and trying to be okay. But her mom’s arm around her shoulders was too fucking much.
Gia set her knife down, let her head sag forward, and sobbed.
“Oh, god,” Mom gasped and pulled her forcibly into a hug. “Baby. Baby, baby, baby. It’s okay. Whatever it is, we can fix it. C’mon, let’s sit at the table and talk.”
Gia resisted her mother’s determined movement toward the table. Her head was like a flushing toilet, every thought swirling, rushing straight down the pipe, and her chest ached with the pressure of holding so much in she thought she’d burst. “You kicked me out of the fucking house!” she cried and then sobbed all the harder.
Mom froze. “What?” And then she got it. “Oh my god. Gia, no! No!”
Gia was crying too hard now to do anything but nod. There was actual snot happening. Jesus Christ.
Mom put her hands on Gia’s cheeks, framing her face and forcing her to look her in the eyes. “This is your home. This building we’re in right now. It’s as much your home as you want it to be, for every day of your life. That will never, ever change.”
“Then what’s that?” Gia managed to make words through her wailing, and she flung an arm out in the direction of the tiny house.
“It was meant to be a gift for you. To give you some privacy and independence. Gia, my love. We thought you didn’t want to be this close to us anymore. We thought giving you your own house would keep you with us longer.”
Gia heard her, but sense couldn’t quite break through the maelstrom going on inside her skull. It was all still guilt and loss and confusion.
Mom wrapped her arms around her again, and this time Gia settled in. She cried against her mother’s shoulder while her mother stroked her hair. She cried until the storm finally passed, and her mother held her the whole time, letting Gia decide when to step back.
When she did, snuffling and wiping her eyes, Mom smiled and brushed wet strands from Gia’s face.
“I thought you ... I don’t know ... decided you liked it better when I wasn’t around.” Holy shit, that sounded weak and whiny when said out loud.
Mom’s chuckle was sad. “No, cara. We don’t like it when you’re not here. Not one minute. We know your life will always take you away, but we want you here every minute you want to be. We can move your furniture back upstairs. That bedroom is yours.”
She should have jumped at that offer, right? What else had she wanted if not her old room back? But with the offer before her, she suddenly wasn’t sure.
She wiped her eyes again and cleared the last straggling tears from her throat. “Um, can I think about that?” She clenched a little, waiting for her mother to be angry.
But Mom smiled. “Of course. If you want to give the new house a chance to feel like yours, that’s fine. You can move back any time you want, right now, in a week or two, a month or two, or not at all. What I want, what your dad wants, is for you to be at home here. To want to be here—next door or upstairs, wherever you feel most at home.”
