His eyes found mine, and he gave me an indignant look. I still couldn’t quite believe he was really here and that this felt both extremely exciting and utterly comfortable.
“You travel a lot?” Mom asked, draping her napkin in her lap.
“Occasionally. This is an excellent wine, Eva.”
My mom blushed. She cut her food into bite-sized pieces with a knife and fork. She nodded to herself. “I used to travel quite a bit. Before Nora was born.”
The redirection of conversation surprised me. Mom never talked about the...before. I sometimes forgot she had a life before Dad.
“You used to live in Germany, right?” John asked.
Mom seemed to brighten with each second, proud that I’d mentioned our heritage to him.
“That’s correct. My parents are from the south, near the Austrian border, but I grew up in the city.” I could’ve sworn her eyes sparkled.
“Do you miss it?” John shifted, placing an arm over the back of my seat.
Mom nodded, tracing the base of her glass with her finger. “Sometimes.”
I wanted to press further, wanted to see her eyes sparkle again.
But Mom beat me to it with a bombshell. “Do you want kids, John?”
I snorted red wine up my nose. “Mom.”
She held up her hands. “I’m just asking, Nora. You aren’t getting any younger.”
But John just laughed.
Instead, he took my hand—one I had placed on my stomach without realizing—and wound his fingers around mine, just like he had at the panel.
“No, I’m afraid not. It’s not something that ever appealed to me.”
Mom didn’t look shocked or disappointed. “I can understand that. Sometimes, I wish I’d waited, had done more. I alwaysloved to travel. That was before the wall came down in East Germany, of course.”
I felt an immense wave of relief at her words. Relief because there was a glimmer of the past there—of a woman with dreams and fond memories. It was as if a curtain had lifted, just the tiniest bit, giving me a glimpse of the Mom I had almost forgotten existed beneath all the grief.
I smiled and clinked my glass against hers.
“So, how did you two meet? I don’t think Nora told me.”
I bit my lip before replying, “At a comic con.”
At the same time, John said, “At her university.”
My head snapped to him.
“I gave a guest lecture about...five years ago? Here in Middleton. Your daughter handed in a brilliant short story. From the moment she entered the study hall, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.”
My mouth went dry. “Brilliant short story? I thought you loathed it.”
He turned to me, his head tilted, a wistful expression crossing his face. “I never said that.”
Was he saying this because Mom was sitting there, or had I completely misremembered our first encounter?
“Come on. I can still see the way you scrunched up your face, like it was yesterday. You know, when you realized what I had written about.”
John paused, thinking it over for a moment. “That wasn’t because it was fan fiction. You were talking about how much you loved Lew Elliot, and I just…”
