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“Maybe,” I finally answer lamely.
Noah coughs and I glance at him, only to see that his face is curled up in laughter.
And that is why I don’t talk about my writing with anyone. No one expects something incredible to come from someone who appears to be so completely average.
The table descends into silence as we all continue eating. The shrimp salad is probably wonderful, but it might as well be leather with how uncomfortable I’m feeling. Still, I can't keep my eyes off my mother. Curt’s been fawning over her ever since we got here, even going as far as buttering her freaking biscuit for her and feeding her little bites of his meal. My mother’s still glowing from the attention, confirming that she seems to be at least a decade younger under his care and attention.
“So…you look familiar to me, Clara,” Noah comments after a few minutes. “I wonder where from. Any guesses?”
For some reason, Curt and my mother freeze at his comment.
Curt clears his throat and shifts in his chair.
My mother almost appears …shamed. That’s odd.
“You might have seen her here and there,” he finally answers his son, not glancing up at him and instead shoveling some of his soup into his mouth.
“Where would I have seen her?” Noah presses. And the question comes out innocently enough…but still, there’s something mocking about it, something I can feel slithering along my skin.
“Well—” Curt’s voice fades away as if trying to grasp the right words to say and failing.
“I was one of the nurses that took care of your mom in Falmouth Hospital,” Mom finishes for him gently, sliding her hand into Curt’s on top of the table. “Before her passing.”
It takes me a second to connect the dots—Daisy flinching long before I do—but then I realize why they’re acting so weird.
Noah’s mother died. And it was highly unlikely that my mom and Curt had happened tofallfor each other conveniently after she passed.
Fuck, Mom.
I side-eye Daisy, who’s unusually quiet. Her brow is furrowed and there’s a tightness to her jaw, as though she’s trying to keep from saying something she might regret.
I mean, they could have fallen for each other after. It’s not unlikely.
Right?
I’m imagining my mom pushing her cart in a grocery store and Curt reaching for a can of beans at the same time she did. A reunion of sorts outside of the professional way they’d acted when she was caring for his wife.
I wish that was how it had happened….but judging by how…guilty…my mother seems, I somehow doubt that’s the case.
“Yeah, I remember you. I remember you well. So tell me. Did you enjoy fucking my dad while my mother was literally dying in her hospital bed?” Noah asks, eerily calm.
Holy fuck.
You could have heard a pin drop as Noah sucked all of the happiness from the air.
Curt stands abruptly, his chair slamming to the ground behind him. My mom’s face is scrunched up and pale, like she’s about to throw up at any moment.
He marches over to Noah, who’s glaring at him furiously, and grabs him by the collar of his shirt, yanking him back towards the bathrooms while the rest of us watch in shock.
I’ve always had a relatively easy relationship with my mother. She doesn’t understand me, not like Daisy does…but I’ve always known that she cares, and she works hard to provide the best life she can for us.
She feels like a stranger to me at the moment, though.
Although she’d never confirmed it, it had been pretty much a given in my head that Dad had stepped out on her. She always told us that he needed his freedom—he told me the same thing himself. I always assumed that other women had been a part of that freedom.
So for my mom to do it to another woman…I’m at a loss for words, quite honestly.
Which is unusual for me since words are the closest allies I have…but still they fail me now.
