Chapter Fifteen
Fern
Fern finished talking to Cooper on the phone. She couldn’t remember the last time her eldest son had made her laugh so unexpectedly. She was in a little café in Butterbury with a mug of tea in front of her, a book beside her, taking a break from working on the quilt squares, but all of a sudden she’d felt an overwhelming urge to speak with the three main men in her life.Up until now conversations had mostly been with Everett, but today the boys were more forthcoming. Usually Cooper was only really interested in drawn-out conversations with his mates and their exchanges would happen in the car on the way to hockey or while she was making dinner or trying to hurry them out of the door.
When Everett came on the line she was smiling. ‘Cooper told me what he did.’According to Cooper, he’d come out of his swimming lessons and in the dark, thought he spotted his dad’s car, opened the boot and thrown his bag inside when the parent had turned around from the driver’s seat and asked what on earth he was doing.
‘I actually cried with laughter,’ Everett told her, voice wobbling as he remembered. ‘I was in the car behind and thoughtWhat the hell is he doing?His face was a picture in my headlights when he turned around. He looked so shocked, I couldn’t keep a straight face. He dived into the passenger seat and sank down really low and told me to just drive.’
It felt good to be laughing with Everett. Along the way they’d almost forgotten how to do that. ‘Let’s hope he doesn’t bump into the parent too soon, he’ll be mortified, I’m sure.’
‘Oh, I thinkthat ship has sailed. We bumped into Leanne at the shops.’
‘Leanne?’
‘Niall’s mum, she’s nice, you’d like her. And her husband came in on his way home from the station so I met him as well. He seemed all right.’
‘Listen to you getting to know the parents.’ She wasn’t sure why but she felt strangely put out. They’d always co-parented but still, it felt odd that she, the mother, had never metmany of her boys’ friends’ parents.
‘Leanne and her husband will both be at the carol concert tonight.’ Everett’s voice brought her back to the present. ‘We’re meeting for drinks first, that’ll help me survive it, I guess.’
‘The school carol concert?’ They had one every year, but Everett and Fern never went.
‘Jacob persuaded me to get tickets, I think a few of his friends are being draggedalong with their parents. He wants to check it out, I suppose, although no such luck with Cooper, he was a flat out no.’
‘What’s Cooper doing instead?’
‘Homework, which means TV.’
‘He’s staying home alone?’
‘He’s fifteen, Fern. And the school is around the corner,’ he sighed. ‘He’ll be fine.’
‘Well I guess I’d better let you get ready then.’
‘Don’t be like that, Fern.’
‘I’m not being likeanything.’ She tried to put her coat on one-handed without putting down the phone. ‘I’ve got to go, we’ll talk later. Enjoy the concert.’
Discombobulated at how relaxed Everett sounded now she was away, Fern pushed the tepid tea away from her. She didn’t want it now. She looked out onto the street. The rain had begun to lash against the windows of the café and she didn’t even have an umbrella.
‘Whoa, what did that pan ever do to you?’ It was Daisy, she’d come home as Fern was trying to assemble a lasagne for dinner and failing miserably at something she usually did without really having to think about it. She, Ginny and Daisy had been sharing the cooking but tonight she wanted to take back a piece of control.
‘I left the sauce for a second, only a second, and it bloody well burned!’Fern couldn’t look at her sister. Her eyes were fixed on the marks on the pan as she scrubbed it to within an inch of its life. ‘It won’t come off!’ She shoved the pan back into the water. ‘It’s ruined.’
‘I would ask if everything is OK,’ said Daisy, ‘but I can see it’s not.’ She lingered a moment longer, but when Fern said nothing else she left her to it.
Fern wished she could just cry. Thetears were there, waiting for permission, but she only ever cried behind closed doors. She took a deep breath, left the pan soaking and got the ingredients out again.
It wasn’t long before Daisy braved coming back into the kitchen. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’
Fern had expected her sister to give her a really wide berth until dinner. She hadn’t anticipated the offer of a sounding board. Sheopened her mouth to say she was fine but closed it again. That’s what she would’ve done six months ago, a year ago. That’s what she’d always done and she was tired of it.
‘Coming here wasn’t only for Mum’s benefit,’ Fern admitted, the words rushing out before she could change her mind. ‘I needed to get away.’
‘Why?’
‘Ever since Dad died … I haven’t really felt in control the way I should.’
