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And I kept letting her down.
I took a deep breath, depressed the handle, and stepped inside the room.
“Mom!” I said, approaching her and wrapping my arms around her.
Her smile was tight, her eyes dark and calculating. She wore a fancy hat and a smart dress. She was getting on in years when she had me. Now, she was in her mid-sixties. She accepted my hug but didn’t hug me back.
I glared at the bottles and glasses of alcohol on the tabletop and set to tidying them away.
“Can I get you a drink?” I said. “Tea? Coffee?”
“No, thank you,” she said.
“Let me get rid of these and then we can talk,” I said.
“I don’t think that matters. I’ve been staring at them all morning.”
I faltered.
“You caught me by surprise,” I said. “I completely forgot about our meeting this morning.”
“I can see that.”
I couldn’t help but flinch.
“Leave the bottles and glasses,” she said. “I won’t stay long.”
At least that was a relief.
Unless…
I looked her over. I didn’t like the look in her eye. It was both harsh and disappointed. The last time I saw her wear an expression like that, I’d been involved in a small shuttlecraft accident. Okay, so it wasn’t small. I wrote the shuttle off. But no one was hurt. That was the important thing.
“I thought we agreed you were to stop having so many late-night parties?” she said.
“It was a birthday party for my friend,” I said, searching for a name. “Zyod. You remember him. You like him.”
“I didn’t see him out there,” Mom said. “Among the other bodies lying on the floor.”
“No. He had to… leave early.”
“From his own birthday party?”
“You know him. He’s always busy, taking off and doing his own thing.”
“And if I were to ask him, would he know what I was talking about?”
I blinked in surprise. She never called me out on my lies before.
“Uh, of course he would,” I said. “I can call him right now if you want.”
I scrambled to think of a way to send him a message without Mom knowing. He’d covered for me many times in the past but I’d always had plenty of time to prepare him for the coming onslaught.
“I wouldn’t want to bother him,” Mom said.
She let out a sigh and suddenly looked her age. She always looked youthful. She maintained a strict diet of healthy food and took no pills or supplements. The only exercise she undertook was keeping herself active. She never stayed in one place for long.
I felt sorry I was the one who made her worry.
