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“All right.” I moved off to the side and crossed my arms. “What’s going on with you? Is everything okay?”
“Uh uh. Don’t turn this around on me. I’m fine. Perfect, really.”
“No one’s perfect. Is it school? Classes going okay?”
“Yes.”
“You’re still liking your living situation?”
“Hell yeah. No curfew.”
That left the only other huge part of her life, which was Preston.
Shit, this was the last thing I wanted to talk to her about. But she was my daughter, and if she was hurting, I wanted her to feel like she could always talk to me.
“Is it you and Preston? You two aren’t having problems, are you?”
A strange look crossed her face, and then in a blink it was gone. “No, he’s great. We’re great.”
That didn’t sound convincing at all. “Serena, if something’s wrong or you’re upset about anything—even boy related—you can talk to me about it. You know that, right?”
Her burst of laughter caught me off guard, but I kept my eyes locked with hers, making sure I wasn’t missing anything.
“Why are you looking at me like I’m about to have a breakdown? Preston and I are fantastic, I promise. There’s nothing to worry about there.”
Relief made me relax my shoulders. I’d long since learned I could trust her to tell me the truth, and if she said everything was good, then it had to be.
So what had Preston been talking about? When I’d called him Serena’s boyfriend, he’d said, “Am I?” and to talk to her. Stupid me had thought he was talking about their not beingtogether, but what if I’d gotten it wrong? What if he wasn’t her boyfriend, but her…fiancé?
Was that it? Things were ratcheting up between them in a different way, and I’d imagined the tension between us as something else?
Keeping my tone as casual as I could muster with my heart racing, I said, “Should I be expecting a talk with him about anything soon? Like maybe announcing something, even though no one asked for my blessing…?”
Serena’s eyes widened and her face went slightly pale as she swallowed. “Uh, no. I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
“I’m not worried. You’ve chosen a good guy, and he seems to make you happy.”
She nodded absently, stroking the needles of the pine beside us. “Yeah, he is. He does.”
“But?”
Snapping her attention back to me, she gave a small smile. “But nothing. We’re just too young to be thinking about marriage.”
“Your mom and I were your age when we had you,” I teased.
“And look how well that turned out.” She smirked. “Trust me, no engagement, and no babies either. Did you and Preston’s parents get together and come up with a plan of attack?”
“No. Why?”
Serena rolled her eyes and turned back to the tree. “You just sound a lot like them. The other night at dinner they were pressing us about weddings and babies too.”
“Hang on a second.” I took hold of her arm and turned her back to face me. “They want you to have a baby?”
“An Abernathy man can juggle,” she said in a low voice that I had to believe was a bad imitation of Preston’s father, the senator. “What Mr. Abernathy fails to realize is thatI’mthe one who’d be juggling school, babies, a household?—”
“Wait, wait, wait. Stop right there with the crazy talk. You’re not pregnant, are you?”
“What?” Serena’s eyes grew to the size of saucers. “No. God no.”She let out a deep sigh and shook her head.
