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“So you know nothing about him?” her father asked.
“What do you know about him?” Trey asked Whitney.
“Whoa,” Gillian said. “I know a lot about him. Relax. All of you. He’s from Glens Falls. He went to college in California and worked for Google for years. His sister lives in Paradise Place and had a baby a year ago and he wanted to move back home to be by family. He has a new job and works from home so he can live anywhere he wants.”
“Who is his sister?” Trey asked.
“Her name is Robin Dawson. Her husband is Brian. They’ve lived here a few years. Brian is from Guilderland and has his own law firm. There are no secrets. They all seem like nice upstanding citizens. What do you take me for?”
“We are just concerned,” her father said. “Happy but concerned.”
“Not concerned,” her mother said, slapping her father’s arm. “Careful. You haven’t dated anyone since Mike. I know you’ve gone on dates and you’ve said they were awful. Now you’re saying you’re dating someone. How long has this been going on?”
“A month,” she said. “I’m going there after the party. We talk all the time and I see him a few times a week.”
“You’re not hovering are you?” her mother asked. “You know that was Mike’s biggest issue.”
She ground her teeth. “I never hovered over Mike. I didn’t nag either. I put up with him for a long time hoping for something that never happened. Asking him if it was going to for years isn’t nagging as much as trying to figure out where I stood.”
She was never going to forget the fact that after she’d left Mike—months later—he’d called her mother and gave a sob story. Then he tried to turn it around on Gillian. That it was all her fault that things didn’t work out.
For a guy that didn’t want to change and didn’t get all that upset when she moved, months later, he tried to place the blame on her.
She hadn’t expected that of him. It hurt even more when her mother seemed to agree.
“I’m sorry,” her mother said. “That isn’t what I meant.”
“Then what did you mean?” she asked.
They heard Ryan and his family coming through the door and her father said, “Why don’t we drop it for now. Your mother means well, but she shouldn’t have said what she did. We trust your judgment, Gillian, but we’d like to meet him sometime.”
“Yes,” Trey said. “That would be nice.”
She nodded. “I’ll talk to him tonight and let you know.”
After lunch and cake, her mother pulled her aside in the front of the house. “I’m sorry for what I said, Gillian. That was wrong of me. I know how upset you were with Mike and I don’t want to see you make the same mistakes with someone else.”
“I didn’t do anything wrong with Mike other than giving him a lot more years of my life than I should have. I waited for something that was never going to come.”
“I know you did. We felt you rushed with him in college though. You moved in together right away. You hadn’t even graduated.”
“Lots of kids live off campus and have roommates,” she said. “It was cheaper and there were two other people in the house too.”
She’d gotten an apartment with two of her friends and then suggested that Mike move in shortly after. It made the expenses cheaper for them all and everyone had their own room with her and Mike sharing hers.
Everyone got along fine. There were no issues. Mike pretty much stayed in their room half the time anyway.
When they were done with college and got jobs, she and Mike got another place and never left it until she moved out.
“I know,” her mother said. “I’m happy you are finally getting out there and dating. How did you meet him?”
This was where things got tricky. She didn’t want to say at work because that would be saying some of his medical issues and she couldn’t do that.
But there were more offices in the building so she could say it and then follow it up with at the park. Yeah, that seemed simple enough.
“I saw him at work one day. Then ran into him at the park with Ben. He was walking his puppy and I recognized him. Or we recognized each other.” Yep, that was the best way to do it.
“Good. So it was the old fashioned way. Not some bar or dating app?”
