AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I stared at him, my spoon frozen halfway to my mouth. “Are you on medications I should be aware of, or is this some sort of personality disorder at work?”
“Neither. I just don’t like it when ladies use the long-distance boyfriend as a human shield,” he retorted. “Why are you making that face?”
“I’m trying to determine whether this dinner is good enough to put up with your nonsense or if I should abandon my bowl and storm out.”
He nodded and took another bite. “Come to a decision yet?”
“Curse Carol-Anne Reilly and her devil dumplings,” I grumbled into my meal. Jed laughed. “But honestly, you can’t say that sort of thing to people.”
“Why the hell not?”
“The bounds of common courtesy?” I proposed. “Conversational filters that most people grasp by the time they’re ten?”
“Your prim Yankee voice sayin’ ‘common courtesy’ while you look over the top of your little wire-rim glasses is doing strange things to me,” he said, grinning impishly. “Do you think you could put your hair up in a bun when you say that?”
“Of course.” I sighed. “You have a librarian fetish.”
He shook his head, all innocent brown eyes and choirboy smiles. “Not a fetish, more like a fascination. So what do you say?”
“I really don’t want to ruin our burgeoning friendship by reacting honestly to that.”
“Fair enough,” he said, offering me another slice of bread and none too subtly moving the knife to his side of the table. “So where do you think you’ll look for work?”
And that was the end of the confrontational portion of our conversation. Jed seemed to sense how far he could push me. All discussions of Stephen were off-limits from then on. We talked about his hometown of Hazeltine and about his family, which seemed almost as large and “colorful” as my own. I got the impression that there was a lot of information he was leaving out. That was fine, since I gave him a heavily edited version of my own childhood—growing up in Boston, the only child of Anna McGavock and her physician husband, moving in with my grandmother after my father died.
Jed was a good listener, although there was a lot I couldn’t tell him. I could have said that my parents had divorced but not that when my dear departed mother met Martin Leary, an American medical student touring through Dublin, she assumed she would be marrying into money. In her mind, “doctor” equaled “rich,” although Dad was traveling as cheaply as possible. Dad’s parents, who had died when I was a baby, had saved for years to send him overseas as a graduation present.
Getting pregnant with me as quickly as possible seemed like the best way to secure her future, or so she thought. She wasn’t counting on marrying a student who was working his way through medical school while bartending. Dad said the look on her face when he brought her home to his tiny walk-up apartment over a pizza shop had been priceless.
I couldn’t tell Jed about my mother’s meager magical gifts, how she saw them as a natural advantage over regular people. That she would take the neighbors’ wives for their pin money by offering tarot readings, telling them what they wanted to hear, even if she saw trouble in the cards. I couldn’t tell him about the irresponsible fertility rites, the love spells on Dad’s coworkers, just for her own amusement, or the money spells my aunts and uncles were smart enough not to try that she did two or three times a year. Her “prayers” always created a windfall, but then we would end up with a major car repair or a cracked foundation at our new house or some disaster that sucked up whatever money she’d gained and then some. I couldn’t tell him about her abandoning us, about the years of absence and that final explosive argument before she left for good. This was definitely not appropriate getting-to-know-you banter.
Clearly, being irritated and sharing personal history were not a good combination. I hadn’t thought about my mother this much in months. But now that I knew a bit more about Nana Fee, it was ironic that my mother did just as Nana had, seducing the first American tourist she came across. Mother just did it a bit more permanently.
Dinner was followed by pecan pie, prepared by yet another church lady. I helped Jed clear the table and looked up at the clock on the microwave. How could it be eleven o’clock already? Between my confessions to Jane and Andrea and trying to keep up with Jed’s abrupt directness, I was exhausted.
“Thank you for dinner,” I said, moving toward the door. “It was an experience.”
“Anytime,” he said, throwing a dishtowel over his shoulder as he followed me through the living room. “I, uh, I’m sorry if I threw you with the questions about the boyfriend.”
“Were there questions?” I chuckled, opening the door wide. The moon had risen, bright and full, casting silvered light across the dark expanse of lawn. “I thought it was mostly insulting assumptions and forecasts of impending doom.”
“I did feed you,” he noted, eyeing the door warily. He stepped back toward the kitchen. “That has to count for something.”
“It does,” I assured him. “Next time, I’ll make dinner, so I can demand extremely personal information from you.”
“Me?” he scoffed. “I’m an open book.”
An open book who seemed to have some serious issues with being outdoors after dark. He seemed absolutely incapable of stepping closer to me as long as the front door was open. What was his issue? Was he phobic? Did he owe vampires money? I opened the door a bit wider, and he immediately took another step back.
“Somehow I don’t think so. Good night,” I said, slipping into the moonlight and closing the door behind me.
5
Dream journeys are rare and beautiful gifts. If you are blessed with a spirit guide, it’s best not to sass him.
—Have You Ever Seen a Dream Walking:
A Beginner’s Guide to Otherworldly Travel
