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What was she talking about? I didn’t know much about my mom’s family. All Dad would tell me was that they lived in Ireland and they believed in things that not everybody believed in. He’d liked the McGavocks when he’d met them, he said, but Mom didn’t want to have anything to do with them when she moved to the States to be married. And now my mother seemed to want to haul me away to some sort of McGavock indoctrination camp?
“Don’t act like I shut her off from your family!” Dad exclaimed. “I was all for traveling to see them, making sure that Nola at least got to meet her grandmother. But you haven’t exactly fostered an open relationship with them. Don’t blame me that she’s been cut off from her heritage.”
“Daddy?” I said, stepping into the kitchen.
“Hi, honey,” he said, schooling his features into a loving, untroubled expression. “How was school?”
My parents were so different, it seemed impossible that they had been married. Dad was tall and trim, with thick dark-blond hair and warm blue eyes. He was wearing his work clothes for Boston Medical Center, a crisp white shirt with the red-and-blue checked tie I’d given him for Father’s Day. My mother looked as if she was ready to head out to a club, in too-tight jeans and a clingy, silky red shirt that was cut low in the front. Silver bangles clanked against both wrists. Her eye makeup was heavy and dark, making her already large brown eyes appear even bigger. Her mouth was painted a bold bloodred.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
She frowned, that lovely motherly energy fading like mist. “I haven’t seen you in almost a year, and that’s the hello I get?”
I ratcheted up my voice to a level of cheer only my father would recognize as my “dealing with an annoying babysitter” voice. “Hello! What are you doing here?”
“Can’t a mother come see her daughter without a special reason?”
I looked to my dad, who was glaring at my mother as if he could make her explode with the power of his mind. I returned my own gaze to her face. Underneath the makeup, I could see the signs of aging. Her lipstick was feathering into the network of tiny wrinkles around her mouth. Permanent dark circles had begun to form under her eyes. Those eyes were sharp and calculating as she looked me over.
“So tell me all about school,” she said, her lyrical voice ingratiating and saccharine sweet. “Are your grades still good? Are you still playing soccer?”
I stared at her, long and hard, without saying a word.
“Oh, fine, I do have a reason for coming to see you. I just thought it was time for you to come live with me!” Mom said, smiling brightly. “I’ve been staying at this beautiful place in Florida. We’re right on the beach, and it’s so lovely and warm. And there’s enough room for you. I mean, I know you’ve never liked Boston, Nola. Your dad told me you don’t have any real friends.”
“I never said anything of the sort!” Dad protested.
Mom rolled her eyes and shared this weird little wink with me, as if we were conspirators. “Don’t you want to spend some time with me? You’ve been living with your dad for so long. Don’t you think I deserve some time, too? A girl needs her mother, Nola. You need me.”>“Out of town? For what? Are you telling me you can’t be bothered to call, but you’ve had time to book a holiday?”
The flinty tone to his voice had my stomach rolling. The weight of fatigue and frustration pressed against my chest, and I just wanted to lie across the bed and curl into a ball. I hadn’t meant to say anything about the trip, but I had no filter when I was tired. If he pressed too much more, I would tell Stephen all about the trip to Kentucky, the Elements, and the shirtless neighbor I may or may not have flirty butterfly feelings for.
“No, no, nothing like that,” I said. “It’s for . . . work. I can’t tell you much about it. Just boring old clinical stuff, really.”
“If it’s just boring old clinical stuff, why can’t you tell me about it?”
I was sincerely regretting that I’d backed myself into a corner with this line of lying, because he had a good point. “Look, let’s just talk about something else, OK?”
“What are you up to over there that you’re not telling me about, Nola?” he demanded.
“What are you implying?” I shot back.
“I mean, this sudden offer of a mysterious job you’d never mentioned before, the urgency of leaving right away, the fact that this hospital you claim to work for doesn’t have you listed among its nursing fellows. I want to know what you’re really doing over there and who you’re spending your time with!” His voice rose to an angry shout. That shocked the hell out of me, because at that time of day, he was at the office, where he rarely ever showed emotion, much less lost control of it.
“You’ve been checking up on me?”
“You gave me no choice!”
“You did have a choice. You could have believed me.” I should have dialed down my righteous indignation, the logical part of my brain knew that. But somehow the fatigue and the fact that he was accusing me of something I had successfully resisted so far—cheating on him with Jed—fueled the irrational portion of my brain and its control over my verbal faculties. Ignore the fact that he’s right not to believe you, Nola, it told me, and that you were quite tempted to kiss Jed the other night. You have every right to be virtuously indignant! Virtuously!
“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this,” I told him. “If you don’t trust me, that’s your problem. I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“I’m tired of coming last in your life, Nola. You need to make our life together more of a priority.”
“We don’t have a life together, Stephen. We have your life and my life, and occasionally they intersect.”
“And whose fault is that?” he demanded. “I’ve done everything I can to lure you away from that circus you call a family. And you fight me at every turn! I’m only doing what’s best for you.”
The use of that phrase and his superior tone, as if I were a naughty child he had to steer, struck a long-buried nerve deep within me. A hot, angry bubble burst forth from my throat in the form of “I don’t have time for this. I’m going to sleep now, because I am exhausted. You would know that if you asked me one single question that had to do with my day or my work or even how I am. All you ever ask is why I had to come here in the first place and when I’m coming home. I’m sick of it. Don’t call me anymore. If I decide that I want to talk to you again, I might call you.”
