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Forgive my dad. There’s a thought. It isn’t as though I haven’t tried. But then I’ll hear about him cozying up to my mom again, and my eye starts to twitch. I shouldn’t be upset. As she said, it’s her life. She can make her own choices. Only I was the one who heard her cry in her room every time she caught him cheating. I was there when she walked around the house like a ghost, so deep in her depression from Dad’s antics that she forgot to feed herself or me. Eventually, they divorced. But he keeps coming back. And he keeps failing her. They’re stuck in an ugly loop, neither of them able to break free.
He isn’t a bad guy in all other respects. He started as an investment banker but is now an adjunct professor of finance at Columbia, mainly because he’d wanted to retire but still needs to keep busy now and then. He likes the idea of torturing—that is, teaching—bright and malleable minds.
As for my relationship with Dad, he’s always been supportive. Which makes it harder for me to see him break her heart over and over again.
Mom is still giving me that disappointed look, and I feel small for sticking my nose in their business again. But I can’t stay silent, apparently. “I just…” I blow out a breath then start again. “How can you trust him?”
She shrugs. “I don’t. But some people are inextricably linked to each other in life. Your father and I are like that. We keep trying.”
I want to put my face in my hands and block her out. How the hell can she defend infidelity like this? As soon as I hit puberty and understood exactly how my dad had hurt my mom, I vowed I’d never let anyone have that much power over me. Ever.
But I didn’t come here to fight with Mom. I want peace. Quiet. Comfort. So I let out a long breath and roll my stiff shoulders. “I’ll try to let it go.”
She glances at me, and I get the feeling she’d been expecting an argument.
“Good.” A slow smile spreads over her face when I simply meet her gaze with a placid expression. Mom huffs under her breath in wry amusement before heading for the stove. “You could stay for dinner, if you like.”
“I have plans for later, unfortunately.” It’s a lie. I love my mom, and I have the feeling if I hang out in this house for several hours, I won’t want to leave.
Pushing aside a teetering stack of art books, then resting my arms on the worn wood table, I watch my mother move around the kitchen. She’s tall for a woman, nearly six feet, and sturdy. Over the years, her ash-blond hair has become steel gray, but she wears it now with copper-bronze tips. The thick mass is piled up on her head in a messy bun and glows against the pitch black of her standard turtleneck and pants set.
She reaches for the kettle, exposing the faded black tattoo band about her wrist of stylized stalks of rye—her homage to me. The other tattoo she has is known only to herself, my dad, and anyone else who has seen her naked…and I really don’t want to think about that or where it might be.
“You’re making a face,” she says, scooping loose Assam tea into a pot.
“A face?”
“Mmm. Like you’ve just smelled something off.” She glances my way and her brown eyes light with amusement. “My kitchen smells just fine, I’ll have you know. So I can only assume you thought of something that upset you. Is it about your dad—”
“No.” I pause. “And I didn’t make a face.”
“Did too.”
Grinning, I shake my head. Hell if I’ll tell her just what imagery upset me. I’d probably be subjected to a “sex is a natural expression of the soul” talk. Again. I had enough of those during puberty and am lucky I didn’t turn out scarred for life. “Stop fishing.”
Mom shrugs and finishes up the tea. She sets the pot, a set of teacups and saucers, milk, and sugar—the whole deal—on a tray and carries it over. Because it isn’t proper tea if you half-assed it by fixing your cup at the counter like I did when I was at home.
“Baby boy,” she says, handing me a cup. “That hello hug spoke for itself. Something is bothering you.”
I wait until she pours my tea and adds milk and sugar to answer. “It’s a blue day, that’s all.”
Blue days. That’s how she describes them. When you feel down and can’t find your way back to the light.
Her cool hand settles over mine. My mother’s hands are beautiful but battered. Rough with red patches, swollen knuckles, and bits of color stuck under short, unpainted nails. But I can’t ignore the way her skin seems thinner now, the veins on the back of her hand thicker. “We all have blue days. But, Rye, I know you. What’s wrong?”
