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“I’m up, I’m up,” he groaned. “Just resting my eyes for a bit.”
I smiled, and I caught Rachel doing the same. For just a moment, she looked over at me, and her smile softened, just a little.
The kids came bounding up the stairs, jostling at the sink to take turns washing their hands, and my dad came into the kitchen, stopping short when he saw me. “When did you get here?”
I laughed. “When you were resting your eyes,” I said.
He sighed, his cheeks reddening slightly. “Ahh.”
Sage ran over for a hug. “Hi, Grandpa!”
He ruffled the top of her hair. “Looked good at practice the other day, kiddo. I told your grandma all about it when I got home.”
She beamed. “You did?”
My mom conceded a tiny smile. “He did. Couldn’t stop talking about your throwing and how fast you were. According to him, you might be the best athlete this family’s ever seen.”
The smile on my daughter’s face was it—the sole reason I was here. Maybe they weren’t perfect with me, and there wasn’t much I could do about that now. But the way she lit up under their praise went a long way toward soothing some of the feathers that hadn’t quite smoothed out since I got home.
As we took our seats at the table, Sage asked, “Are you coming to my first game?”
My mom nodded, serving up the casserole to my dad first, then me and my sister. “It’s on the calendar. You sure that’s not a dangerous sport to be playing?”
“No tackling,” I told her. “No more dangerous than playing soccer or basketball.”
“Well,” she murmured, “I guess I’ll have to see for myself what it’s like next week.”
Sage bounced in her seat. “And it’s right after Mom’s birthday! I told her maybe the team can sing to her.”
“To which I told her that I sincerely wished for anything but that,” I said.
“Thirty-five. Hard to believe it,” Dad said. He took a mouthful of his casserole. “It’s good, honey.”
The conversation was driven mainly by the kids, which wasn’t out of the ordinary. They chatted happily about school and their friends and what YouTube channel they liked the most. Rachel and I interjected the most, and my parents seemed content to occasionally comment on the food or the weather.
There was a brief lull, and my dad gave me a quick look. “You, uh, doing good on your writing over at Ian’s house?”
My mom’s face did that pinched thing, and Rachel kept her focus on her plate.
Instead of biting my tongue or letting their bullshit get to me, I smiled at my dad. “I am, thank you for asking. I have a new series idea I’ve been plotting out, and I’m going to send a couple of chapters to my editor in a few days. But I’m really excited about it.”
He nodded, only a brief, hard look at my mom before he pulled his attention back to me. “That’s great.”
“And you get paid for ideas?” Rachel asked. “I thought you needed a whole book first.”
If someone didn’t give me a gold star for keeping my face pleasant during the whole meal, I’d be really sad because holy shit, did I deserve one. “I get an advance when we sign a contract for those books, so yes. Then I’ll get the rest of the advance when I submit the second draft, and once I earn that out, I get my monthly royalties. Plus foreign and audio, which is how I’m still getting paid, because I’m earning royalties on my previous books.”
“I guess I don’t know much about how your job works,” she conceded quietly. Rachel pushed her fork across her plate to take another dainty bite of the bland casserole.
“How can we?” my mom said. “She was never here. And now that she’s back, she’s hardly ever here either.”
I added a liberal amount of salt, but my mom wasn’t watching. “You could always ask, Mom. I’m happy to tell you about it, but honestly, I’ve never known you to care much about what I do.”
She sighed, resignation coating her face like a mask. “It just doesn’t seem right, is all. You’re living with someone you’re not married to. You’re almost thirty-five and…” Her voice trailed off when she realized I’d set my fork down and was staring at her, my gaze unflinching.
“Estelle,” my dad said firmly. “I think that’s enough.”
“Oh no, let her speak, Dad.” I refused to look away from my mom. “If she’s got something to say, by all means, she should say it.”
