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“So you and Ella had a leg up on the rest of us.”
She dug into her dinner with a big smile on her face. “I like having my legs up around you,” she said quietly.
But the leg up came at the end of the meal when the waitress came over and said, “Your aunt took care of your dinner tonight and left this message for you.”
He sighed and took the tab to read out loud, “I’m so proud of you for splurging on your girlfriend. My treat for tonight so you can bring her back here sooner than months now.”
He laughed. She always got the last word in.
21
Means Well
“Iwant to be mad at you for not telling me,” Ivan’s mother said the minute they walked in the front door of his parents’ house. “But at least I found out before my sister could tell me.”
“Sorry, Mom,” he said. “I should have told you at least a week prior when we decided to let everyone know. I didn’t think of it. And this is Kendra Key. Kendra, my mother, Shay, and my father, Ethan.”
She walked forward and shook hands with Ivan’s parents. “So nice to meet you. I hadn’t realized you didn’t know or I would have given him a nudge.”
She had felt bad about that, but Ivan was a grown man and knew his family. She handled hers without getting him involved and she figured he’d do the same.
“I appreciate that,” Shay said. “Sometimes both of my boys need a nudge.”
“I heard that,” she heard yelled from the back. She knew it was Devin. Ivan had told her that his mother was having Sunday dinner for everyone.
Thankfully she’d already met Devin prior. Though she’d never met Hope, she had talked to her on the phone.
“Both my boys move slow, but at least Devin has taken a few steps. Now if I could only get a grandchild.”
“You’re worse than Jolene at times,” Hope said. “And it’s nice to finally meet you in person, Kendra.”
“You too,” she said to Hope.
“I’ll be around if you want to talk. We know how Jolene can be,” Hope said. “We’ve all been there, but she means well and I’m not complaining.”
Kendra smiled at that. It amazed her how welcoming the entire family seemed to be. How accepting too. That if Jolene picked a match it was a done deal.Thatshe wasn’t sure how she felt about.
Not that she wasn’t falling in love with Ivan, but she wasn’t ready to let anyone know that.
“Margo said the same thing. Aimee did too. I haven’t seen Nic, but Aiden made a comment that Nic was happy to hear the news and she’d be in to talk at some point.”
“Our family is like that,” Shay said.
“Everyone has to band together against hurricane Jolene,” Ethan said.
“So I’m learning. But it’s very refreshing. Great too. I didn’t have that growing up. Not in my family.”
“Me neither,” Hope said. “My parents barely talk to each other. My mother, well, she’s a little hard to be around, which is why my sister and I live here now. I know it’s horrible to say, but it’s the truth.”
“Sometimes I think my sister does that on purpose,” Shay said. “That she finds people for our family that need a family of their own. But when I think about it, that’s not everyone’s case.”
“No?” she asked.
“I told my wife she shouldn’t try to get into her sister’s head. A person could get lost in that chaos,” Ethan said.
“We’ve all tried,” Devin said. “It doesn’t work. But my mother is right. Aimee didn’t have much of a home life. Her stepfather raised her after her mother died, but he’s still around and Aimee is close to him. Nic’s mother is in jail, but her grandparents raised her and you’ve seen Theresa in the restaurant I’m sure.”
“I have,” Kendra said. She’d heard Aimee’s father’s name mentioned, but never her mother and knew why now. The same with Nic’s parents, why they weren’t talked about.
