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I held off drilling in the last screw, so I didn’t interrupt her conversation. It sounded important.
“Will they keep her overnight?”
She sighed.
“Alright, well that’s good at least. I’ve been bugging her to go to the doctor. Thank God you were home when she fell.”
There were a few minutes of silence. When Josie spoke again, she raised her voice. “I wasn’t onvacation, Mom. I was in a mental-health facility. And you know that because I left you a message the day I went in.”
Silence.
“No, actually there is a difference. A vacation is very different. You know what, I have to go. Please tell Nilda I’ll call her tonight, when she’s done in the emergency room.” She swiped to hang up without saying goodbye.
After thirty seconds of shaking her head and staring at her phone, she seemed to remember I was there. “Sorry about that,” she said. “Do you need me to hand you anything?”
I shook my head and debated saying something. But she looked pretty upset. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
I waited another minute. “You want to talk about it?”
“Talk? I think you’ve said ten words to me since we met. And most of them were insults.”
“Some people say I’m a better listener than talker…”
“No. It’s okay. But thanks.”
A minute passed, and she still seemed pretty riled up from the call. “God forbid my perfect mother have a child who isn’t perfect. It’s the first time I’ve spoken to the woman since I checked myself into a mental-health facility, and she asks me howvacationwas.Vacation! You know, like I was sipping a margarita and lying on the beach instead of having my shoelaces removed from my sneakers as a safety precaution.”
“Some people pretend things aren’t happening because they can’t deal with them.”
Josie huffed. “Not my mother. She’s capable of dealing with anything.”
“Maybe that’s what she wants you to think.”
When she didn’t respond right away, I drilled the last screw in on the board and climbed down from the ladder. Josie was still stewing as I went outside, grabbed another slab of sheetrock, and screwed that one in too. The woman might be a shit driver, in over her head with this dilapidated house, and my dick had too big of an interest in her for my liking, but I wasn’t a total asshole. It sounded like she’d had a rough time lately. So I took out my phone and texted Porter, asking him for something I didn’t ask of many—a favor. Then I went about hanging the last of the ceiling.
Porter’s truck rumbled to the curb just as I finished up. He had one of those obnoxious exhaust systems—the kind you paid extra for to wake up your neighbors when you left early in the morning. He knocked on the screen door while I was still up on the ladder.
I lifted my chin toward the door. “That’s for me, if you could let him in.”
“Oh,” Josie said. “Sure.”
From two rooms away, standing on top of a ladder, I still couldn’t miss the way Porter’s eyes lit up when he got a look at the woman answering the door.Shit.I should’ve seen that coming. Josie was his type—she had a pulse. Porter flashed a smile that made too many women drop their panties, but his dimples only made the muscle in my jaw flex. I hurried to sink the last of the screws, but Porter already had Josie’s hand lifted to his lips by the time I climbed down and got my ass into the kitchen.
“Down, boy. I invited you here to work, not act like you’re in a singles bar.”
Porter’s eyes gleamed. “I was introducing myself to the lovely lady.”
I lifted my chin. “Josie, this is Porter. Porter—Josie. Now get to work.”
Josie’s forehead wrinkled. “Work?”
“Porter’s an idiot who chases anything in a skirt, but he’s a damn good spackler. He can start the ceiling while I get the wall boards up.”
“Oh, you don’t have to do that. I can handle it. The ceiling was more than enough.”
“We got it.”
