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“You’d better chill out before you have a coronary,” she told herself.
Clara tried to listen to a true crime podcast to take her mind off of the situations, but she blanked out the carefully scripted words. As she drove, she pictured John’s face contorted into that of a hideous monster.
“Stop, Clara,” she ordered herself. “You’re overreacting.”
John was once again ten minutes late. Clara knew that he did that just to upset her. She vowed not to let him see that she was annoyed.
As soon as John’s car stopped, Zeke hopped out and ran over to her.
He hugged her and said, “I missed you, Mom.”
“I missed you, too,” she said.
“Did you bring Reno?” he asked.
Then, before she could answer he opened the back door of her car and pulled out his best friend.
Clara grinned. She wasn’t sure whether Zeke was more excited to see her or Reno.
She had to wait while John slowly got out of his car and opened up his trunk. He pulled out Zeke’s suitcase and unhurriedly brought it over to Clara’s car.
“Tell me about Dillon,” John said.
“Dillon is a friend of mine and Zeke’s,” Clara said.
“It sounds to me like the two of you are a lot more than just friends,” John said. “According to Zeke, you guys have been seeing a lot of each other lately.”
“My relationship with Dillon is absolutely none of your business,” Clara said.
“It is my business because the man is spending a lot of time with my son,” John said.
Since when do you care about who Zeke spends time with?Clara thought.
Aloud, she said, “Zeke and Dillon are good friends. Dillon takes the time to play ball with him and likes to play board games with Zeke. Dillon is very good with Zeke.”
“Zeke said that sometimes Dillon stays late and reads to him before he goes to bed.”
“That is true. Dillon has come over for dinner. We play some board games afterward and then Zeke has asked Dillon to read with him.”
“If this man is going to be around my son, I think that he and I need to sit down and have a good conversation about it,” John said.
You would try to intimidate him like you do everyone else. It won’t work,Clara thought.
Instead of saying what was on her mind, she simply said, “We need to be going.”
John grabbed her arm and said, “You heard what I said.”
Clara jerked her arm out of his grip and said as calmly as she could, “I’m sure that there will come a time when the two of you will meet.”
“It had better be sooner rather than later,” John snarled.
Clara didn’t respond. She simply got into her car and gently closed the car door, locking it as soon as the door was shut, half expecting him to try to wrench open the car door.
John stood so close to the car that she was afraid that he wasn’t going to let her back out of the parking lot. Finally, though, he stepped back and she drove away.
Her arm throbbed a little bit where John had gripped it so tightly. She hadn’t expected him to touch her while they were in public. He was obviously counting on her not wanting to make a scene in front of their son or in front of other people.
Taking a deep breath, she looked in her rearview mirror and asked, “Did you have fun with your father?”
