Page 92 of Racing Hearts

Rob stoops, just slightly, like he’s aiming a kiss toward my mom’s cheek. But then his eyes ping toward my face and he straightens.

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he says. “We’ll go over the month-end accounting.”

Mom nods tightly. “Of course. Tomorrow. Accounting.”

“Good to see you again, Kath,” he says, as he passes me on his way to the door.

I force another smile. “You too, Rob.”

When his footsteps fade down the porch, I spin. Mom has her hands up, bangles and shawls cascading from her arms like a hippy surrendering to a SWAT team. She murmurs my name, perhaps bracing for a speech. I’m not angry, though. I’m just disappointed.

I heave a sigh. “Your business partner.”

“It’s not what you are thinking.”

I eye her as she sinks onto the couch. The same one that she’ll lay on for days the next time her heart gets broken. This trip has been so different from all the others. Mom has been level and stable—not flying high on some new romance, but also not crashing after an old one, either. And the studio, too. Every morning, I’ve watched her cruise out the front door with a smile, and every evening she kicks her feet onto the ottoman with that exhausted, but full, feeling of a day well spent. After years of flitting from job to job and man to man, she’s finally found purpose.

“Mom, you’re doing well. You’re doing so well. Are you sure you want to throw that away?”

Her lips flatten. “How am I ‘throwing it away’?”

“Because if you get involved with this guy, you’ll eventually break up. And if you break up with your business partner, you’ll either have to buy him out or dissolve the business or, at the very least, find someone to take his place, which will put that business under threat.”

“What do you mean ‘you’ll eventually break up’?”

I frown. “Mom. Come on. Your track record is clear on this.”

“No, it isn’t. I haven’t dated Rob before. So, we have no track record at all.”

“You know what I mean.”

“And you know what I do. Rob is nothing like anyone else I’ve been with before. He is caring and kind and supportive. He lifts me up, he doesn’t push me down.”

I can see she really believes that. But I’ve heard it all before. Or, maybe not that list of traits exactly, but all of the guys have had good qualities. Most of them have been handsome, several exciting and adventurous, some passionate, others generous. “Sure, but…Rob isn’t the first guy in the world who is nice.”

She throws her hands up and then lets them drop as she stands. “Kath, this is the reason I didn’t tell you about him. Exactly this.”

“Wait,” I say. “How long has this been going on?”

She blinks and I can practically see the recalculation happening behind her eyelids. “Some time.”

“Was he the one on the phone a while ago?”

Her mouth purses. “I wasn’t ready to tell you then. I’m not even ready to tell you now.”

My throat lets out a strangled sigh. “Because you already knew you were doing something wrong.”

“No,” she says. “Because I knew how you would react.”

I shake my head. Maybe there’s no point in pushing back on this. If she’s been seeing Rob for over a month, then she’s already too deep in it. I’m about to give up when Mom says, “There’s nothing wrong with falling in love, you know.”

“There is if you keep getting hurt,” I say. “Have you forgotten how many breakups you’ve gone through? Because I haven’t. I haven’t forgotten a single one.”

Especially not the first one.

I’ve lost them both. I hear the words as if she’s speaking them aloud. I feel her arms circle me as the slamming door is still echoing and I’m trying to hold my slight shoulders steady enough to support her. I still feel myself fighting back tears, biting at the inside of my cheek so hard I draw blood, because I know I’ll only make it worse for her if I show just how much Dad leaving is hurting me, too. I can feel her coarse hair in my fingers as I whisper that everything will be okay, even though I know it won’t because she lost almost everything she has ever loved. Because now I’m all she has and I’m too small and too young to take care of her.

“Just because I’ve failed in the past doesn’t mean I should give up on it for the rest of my life. You of all people should understand that. And, with the last few weeks, I thought maybe you were finally getting there. I suppose not, though.”