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“What do you want to know?” I asked, opening the fridge.
“There’s summer sausage in the little glass container,” she said, focused on her cooking. “How many dates have you two been on?”
I thought about it. “I’m not sure we ever said anything was a date, but we’ve been out three times.”
“You better tell me you picked up the checks,” she said in a threatening tone.
“Mom.” I glared at her. “Of course I did.”
She put her hands up in mock surrender. “Well, these days young people like to hang out,” she said, putting her fingers up and making the sign for air quotes, “and split checks, and I’m not for it. You pay the check, you hang up her coat, you open her door. I raised a gentleman.”
“I feel like I was there, too,” Dad said lightly.
“We,” Mom corrected. “We raised a gentleman.”
Dad gave me a conspiratorial look; we both knew Mom was just getting started.
“When do we get to meet her?” Mom asked.
I took a bottled beer out of the fridge and popped off the cap, taking a drink before answering.
“I don’t know. Things are up in the air right now. The Chronicle is for sale and she might not be here for much longer.”
Mom shook her head, took the oven mitts off her hands and set them down, then crossed her arms.
“Well, you just make her stay, Ryan. Wine her. Dine her. Make sure she knows she’d be walking away from the most incredible single man in this hemisphere.”
“Carol,” Dad said. “Let him live his life.”
“I want him to live his life, but not alone for the next fifty years! If he acts like he doesn’t care, she’ll think he doesn’t care.”
I took a long pull on my beer. I knew coming into this dinner with them that we’d have to talk about Avon. I hadn’t expected it to be quite this intense, though.
“How long until dinner’s ready?” I asked, considering waiting in my truck until it was time to eat.
“Another forty-five minutes or so,” Mom said. “Are the two of you looking for the same things?”
I set my beer down and my dad sighed, wheeling himself out of the room.
“I’m not doing this with you,” I told my mom.
“Doing what? Talking about your life?”
“Mom,” I said gently. “I’m seeing someone. I like her a lot. That’s all there is to know for now. I know that’s hard for you, but that’s just the way it is.”
Her eyes filled with tears and she looked away. “I just want to see you happy.”
I approached her and put my hands on her shoulders. “I am happy. I never thought I’d date a woman who lives in the Beard again, but I couldn’t not date Avon. She’s amazing.”
“I could talk to her,” she offered.
Lord help me. That was the worst possible idea ever.
“You don’t need to do that, Mom.”
She turned to look at me, swiping at the corners of her eyes. “I mean just to let her know how much you’ve been through and how much you have to offer.”
My mother was a normal, rational woman until the subject of potential partners and babies for my sister and me came up. All bets were off then.
“Either I’m enough for her, or I’m not,” I said. “If she’s even staying here. She has a job back in California.”
“She has a job here, too! And she’s a business owner.”
I walked over to the fridge and opened it, taking out the half-full bottle of white wine my mom had placed a wine stopper in and using it to refill the nearly empty glass on the counter.
“The Chronicle is a tough business to own,” I said. “I heard through the grapevine that she paid for the employees to get Christmas bonuses out of her own pocket.”
“Has she asked Keller Strauss to help?”
I shook my head. “I think she’s trying to sell it now. We’ll see what happens.”
She sipped wine from her glass, taking a deep breath. “It’s nice to see you caring about someone again. And having fun. You deserve that.”
My parents had loved Megan, the girlfriend and fellow officer I’d lost eleven years ago. We’d only dated for seven months, but my parents had welcomed her like a family member from the first time I brought her home. I often forgot that they’d been devastated by her death, too.
“Can you behave yourself if I invite her to dinner?” I asked.
Mom gaped at me. “Behave myself? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means no talk about commitment, marriage, babies, or the future.”
She furrowed her brow. “I’d never talk about anything like that in front of her.”
This from the woman who just wanted to persuade Avon to stay here and make babies with her son, “the most incredible single man in this hemisphere.”
I gave her a look and she huffed an exasperated sigh.
