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It had taken years for them to believe she would be okay. She wouldn’t visit the details of her file on them if she didn’t have to.
“I know this is going to shock you,” Alexa said, “but it’s about a guy.”
“What makes you think I’d be shocked?” her mom asked.
“Um, maybe your not-so-subtle hints at brunch that I need to find a man?”
“That doesn’t mean I don’t think you can get one.”
“Yeah well, apparently I can’t, not one I can trust anyway,” Alexa said.
“Want to tell me about it?”
Alexa took a long sip of Coke and leaned back in the booth. “I liked this one, but it was complicated from the beginning. I should have known better.”
“Complicated how?” her mom asked.
Alexa opened her mouth to answer, then stopped when the waitress arrived with their food. She set down the bowls and plates and Alexa waited until she left to answer her mom’s question.
“We met through work.” It was the best she could manage, the most she was willing to say.
“Ah,” her mom said. “And?”
“And…” Alexa took a bite of her salad to buy herself more time to decide how much to say and how to say it. “We only saw each other a few times, but I shouldn’t have been seeing him at all.”
“And the man — a man who shall remain nameless I suppose — broke your trust?”
Alexa nodded. “He knew about the accident all along, but he pretended not to.”
She was surprised to feel the sting of tears, the sense of violation she’d been carrying around since she’d seen the text on Nick’s phone hitting her all over again.
Her mom’s mouth turned down. She reached for Alexa’s hand. “I’m sorry, honey. I can see where that would feel like a betrayal.”
“It was a lie.” The statement came out more fiercely than she’d intended.
“What did he say when you confronted him?” her mom asked.
“He said he didn’t know how to tell me he knew.”
Her mom took a drink of her chardonnay. “That seems plausible, doesn’t it?”
“You don’t understand,” Alexa said, putting down her soup spoon.
“Then help me understand. The accident was all over the news when it happened. You know that, even if you were too focused on your recovery to pay it much attention. Maybe he didn’t want your relationship to start on that note.”
“He used to be a cop, Mom.” Surprise passed over her mom’s features. “He didn’t just hear about it on the news. He went looking for it. He dug around in the worst time of my life, then pretended like he didn’t know anything about me.”
Her mom drew in a breath and took another drink of wine, the sound of silverware clinking on plates and bowls and the murmur of other diners filling in the gap in their conversation.
“I imagine that felt like a violation,” her mom finally said.
“Yes, exactly,” Alexa said. She felt vindicated even as she was aware that she wasn’t being entirely fair to Nick in her representation of the situation to her mother. Nick had gone digging in her past because she’d shown up at MIS, making it clear the allegations against the company were of interest to the AG. He was scoping out an enemy, trying to figure out who he was dealing with. It wasn’t his fault that such a big event was part of her history.
Which still didn’t excuse the lie. He should have told her, preferably before they slept together.
“And now you feel like you can’t trust him? This man?” her mom asked.
“Would you?”
