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Should she talk about Ellen? Todd?
Or just tell Shelley that she understood? That she was hurting, too? That she loved her and would do anything she could to help her through this time.
Because she did love the purple-haired punk. As much now as she had when they’d first put her, a squirmy wet, beautiful baby, in her arms in the birthing room.
Shelley stood. “The little tea party was nice, Mom, but I gotta get to school.”
It was the sarcasm that did it.
“Sit down.”
Shelley sat. And wasn’t quite able to hide her uneasiness.
Okay. Martha still had the touch. They were getting somewhere.
“I got a call from the high school yesterday. Marybeth said I excused you to go visit with Stacy for the afternoon.”
“Bitch.”
Martha barely noticed her daughter’s language. “I have to tell you, Shell, I’m not thinking too highly of you at the moment. Stacy? Your stepmother? Really, didn’t you think it would hurt enough to find out you were lying, forging my signature, cutting school, going God knows where? Why on earth was another slap necessary?”
She had not rehearsed a single one of those words. Nor plan
ned on the quivering in her chest that was making breathing difficult.
“Who’s the boy Pastor Marks saw you hanging all over?”
Shelley’s eyes, narrowed and sharp, pinned her. “He told you?”
Martha didn’t think a reply was necessary.
“Bastard.”
Yeah, this was going just like she’d planned. She was in complete control. Getting her offspring in order.
“Who is he, Shell?”
“No one.”
After her diatribe, that was the only response she could expect. But she wasn’t going to accept it. Something mattered to Shelley. Something had to matter to her. And Martha had to figure out what that something was.
“Here’s the thing,” she said, pushing her little muffin plate aside. “You want to get out of here this morning, be with your friends, tell them all about how the bitch and the bastard narked on you. Okay. I get that. But you aren’t leaving here until we talk. Keith is prepared for me to be gone from the office all morning—until Monday if necessary. I’m prepared to sit here a long time.”
Shelley said nothing. For five full minutes. And then ten. Half an hour passed and other than Shelley shifting in her seat several times and heaving frequent long sighs, the room was silent.
Sitting there with her daughter, Martha found a strange semblance of peace. She and Shelley were actually together, in the same room, and they weren’t fighting. She was close enough to her daughter to hear every breath she took.
And the morning was giving Martha another gift she’d never have been able to take for herself. An opportunity just to sit. To slow down. Relax. Breathe.
And think.
There were no ready solutions—that would’ve been too much to ask—but she found herself welcoming the time to think during the first part of the day, when she was rested, rather than at night when she was harried and worried and exhausted. Morning or night, the problems were the same. They just seemed more manageable at 9:00 a.m. than at midnight. Take Shelley, for instance…
“Okay, what?” The girl had lost none of her attitude.
“Tell me about this boy.”
“His name’s Drake.”
