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“Wh—What’s too good?”
She finally gets ahold of her laughter and then she leans forward, whispering to me conspiratorially. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? If this is just one big act for him, we just have to flip the script.”CHAPTER ELEVENADAMThe day is going better than I could have imagined. Madeleine is playing her part to a T, my mom and sister-in-law are half in love with her already, and my nieces are completely enamored by Mouse. I sit back in my lawn chair, staring out at the scene before me, trying not to gloat. It’s almost too easy. I’ll be able to milk this barbecue for months. Every time my mom brings up moving on, I’ll remind her that I have. It’s not my fault Madeleine and I didn’t end up working out.
She’ll have no leg to stand on. I won’t know what to do with all my free time—her constant pestering ate away whole chunks of my day. I could take up running again, maybe finally get around to reading the books stacked up on my nightstand.
My mom takes a seat in the lawn chair beside mine.
“Should be ready any second now,” Samuel announces from his station at the grill.
Thank god. The smell of barbecue chicken has made my stomach growl for the last half hour.
Kathy has the girls go in to wash their hands and gather up plates and dishes for the picnic table outside. Madeleine offers to help, and I smile. She fits in so well. No one would ever guess she’s not really here by choice.
That’s when I notice my mom staring at me.
I turn, and she smiles.
“I’m happy for you, son,” she says, tilting her head toward Madeleine. “She is quite a catch.”
I nod. “Isn’t she?”
“Beautiful,” she says.
“Very.”
“Smart.”
“And funny,” I add.
“How’d you manage to snag someone as good as her?”
I shrug and take a victorious sip of my beer. “Right place, right time I guess.”
“Oh, you’ll have to tell us the story over lunch.”
“There’s nothing to tell, really. Boy meets girl, falls for her, same ol’, same ol’.”
My mom shakes her head. “Nonsense. I bet it’s a great story, and Madeleine says you’ve taken her on quite a few dates. She even told me about what you did for her last week.”
I rack my brain, trying to think of what Madeleine could have told her. Was it about puppy training? The vet visit? Surely she didn’t completely make up a story.
“C’mon, you remember…she went on and on about the hot…”
She waits for me to fill in the rest and the silence drags on so long that I finally have to give in.
“Dogs?” I supply.
She laughs and bats my arm. “No! The hot air balloon ride you two took at sunrise!”
I take another sip of beer just in time to nearly spit it out all over the grass. Somehow, I manage to force it down and nod, playing along. “Of course, yeah…the hot air balloon. We’ve done so much that I forgot about that.”
“Wow, must be some whirlwind romance. She told me about the camels too. Y’know, I’ve never even seen a camel in real life!”
What the fuck, Madeleine?
“Oh yeah. She loved the camels.” I nod again.
“A camel ride through the park—so creative, Adam. Most men would have stuck with a horse-drawn carriage, but not you. Who taught you to be so romantic?”
I tug at my shirt’s collar, trying to loosen the material just a bit. “Ha. Guess I got it from you.”
“I swear when I look at her, I can see exactly what my future grandchildren will look like.”
Alarm bells blare like sirens in my head. “Grandchildren? C’mon Mom, we’ve only been dating a few weeks.”
She looks stricken. “Madeleine says it’s been longer, that you two even talked about marriage sometime next spring.”
“Next spring?!”
I should have known better than to leave Madeleine alone with my mother. I thought she would play along. Be nice, stay quiet—that was the plan.
“It does seem quick,” she admits. “Was she lying?”
The mention of that word nearly forces me to break out in hives.
“No, of course not. I mean, she and I have entertained the idea. Nothing serious, obviously.”
I thought my heart was dead—gone—after Olivia, but Madeleine has proved it’s alive and well, beating so hard I can barely see straight. She walks out of the house with plates stacked in her hands and I stalk her approach to the picnic table, waiting for her to look up at me so I can convey all my anger with one glance. She ignores me, and why wouldn’t she? Between Kathy and my nieces, she barely has a spare minute. Allie has stolen her brown sandals and is tromping around the yard in them. Payton declares with a shout that she gets to sit by Madeleine during lunch. Then Allie chimes in, claiming the spot on the other side of her.
