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She was wrapped in a robe and peering inside the fridge.
“Darling!” she called when she saw me. She was holding a carton of eggs. “What do you think about pancakes?” She frowned. “Is Fiona on any kind of low-carb diet?” she pondered. “No,” she decided without waiting for my answer. “She needs carbs. More curves never hurt anybody.”
The fridge slammed closed, and she began opening and closing cabinets at random.
“What kind of organization system is this?” she cried. “Pans need to bebesidethe oven, not across from it.” Metal clanged as she rummaged, as if it weren’t six in the morning and there wasn’t another person sleeping in the house.
Then again, I could renovate the fucking kitchen without Fiona waking up.
“I’ll rearrange to a better system after breakfast,” Mom said, placing a frypan on the stove.
“Jesus, Mom,” I muttered, moving forward in the direction of the coffee. “You don’t need to rearrange anything.”
I felt a terrible sense of déjà vu. She’d been exactly like this with… before.
It didn’t help that I’d deployed soon after I got married. We were young. Mom thought she was helping Gabbie get the house together.
“Fiona won’t mind,” Mom said with a wave of her hand. “And sit down.” She pointed to the barstool. “I’ll get your coffee. I still know how you take it. Plus, I’m loving playing with this coffee machine.” She nodded to the espresso machine on the counter. The one thing in the kitchen that Fiona seemed to use on a daily basis. She took her coffee seriously and was always muttering about the ‘dirt water masquerading as coffee in America.’
Though it frustrated me, I knew fighting with my mother, especially at six in the fucking morning, was futile. I went to the barstool instead.
“Mom,” I said as she banged around with the espresso machine. “Seriously. Don’t rearrange our kitchen cabinets.”
“You’ll thank me in the end,” she said to the coffee machine.
Fuck.
She wasn’t going to listen. Unless I got mean with her. And I didn’t get mean with my mother. That was my father’s job.
“I justloveFiona,” she half shouted over the low roar of the espresso machine. “She’s beautiful, funny, and that accent—wonderful!”
She reached up for a mug and clattered around making my coffee.
“I’m upset about not being invited to the wedding and not even beingtoldabout Fiona’s existence, but I’ll forgive you,” Mom said as she slid the mug across the counter. “She told me it was rushed and overwhelming, and her own parents weren’t even there. Then again, they live in Australia, which is like eighteen hours away, and we live less than four hours away, but whatever.” She turned back to the kitchen, presumably to make pancakes.
I was surprised that my mother was shrugging the wedding off so easily. I’d known it would cause some kind of familial drama and hurt my mother’s feelings.
I’d braced for it.
Except here she was, shrugging it off.
My mother did not shrug things off.
“Plus, maybe we’ll throw a proper wedding back home on your first anniversary,” she said as she grabbed a bowl.
There it was.
I didn’t have the energy to have that argument.
We’d hopefully be divorced, or at least separated, by our first anniversary. I still wasn’t quite sure how long we had to actually stay married in order for the Green Card shit to work.
Something I should’ve probably done more research on.
“Mom,” I said urgently, glancing toward the hall. Fiona had yet to appear. I couldn’t count on her sleeping like the dead much longer. She was an early riser, though not by choice but because she worked in a bakery. And although I had no idea how the fuck she actually made it there every morning, she seemed to always be able to get herself out of that dead sleep.
“Yes, sweetie?” my mother replied, mixing things into her bowl.
“I need to talk to you.”
