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“I’m glad you two are back in town, you know,” Nana said, bustling across the kitchen once the kettle began to whistle. “I might’ve missed you a little.”
I forced a smile that felt incredible fragile. “We missed you, too. I’m sorry I didn’t call when we got back.”
“You needed a little time to yourselves. It’s okay.” She lifted the kettle and tilted it over our mugs. Steam rose as the tea bags floated up, then sank into the hot water.
“Still.”
I’d asked her to come over while I waited for Xander to return from Carter’s Creek. The comfort of being alone wasn’t much of a comfort without him here, as it turned out. And as far as company went, Kingston didn’t qualify.
Nana spooned sugar into our mugs, then slid one toward me. “When you get to be my age, waiting’s not so hard. Time moves faster, and you’ve got plenty of practice. You think you’ll be up for visitors again soon?”
“I thought that’s what we were doing now,” I admitted.
“Oh, hon. I’m not visitors. I’m family. You’ve gotta suffer me whether you want to or not.” She said it teasingly but with pride. As if anyone had to suffer Nana. Even on the darkest days, she was a comforting brightness. “But Connell told me how nice it was to see you again, even given the circumstances. And I know Nadia would like to come visit… when you’re ready, of course.”
Nadia was a former maid at Morrow Manor. I could still remember the look of terror on the maid’s face when she came to my room in the manor all those months ago, delivering the bad news: Xander’s grandfather was summoning me. It’d been the look of someone who knew exactly what happened when that disgusting old man summoned a human woman to his quarters. If not even the mate of his own grandson was exempt from his filthy desires, a human maid without a car or other job prospects certainly hadn’t been.
It was one of the few things we’d done at Morrow Manor that I could truly take pride in. With Nana and Gena’s help, we’d gotten Nadia out. Samuel would never touch her again. He had no idea where she was.
“How is she?” I asked.
“Oh, you’d barely recognize her. She’s talking more, spending less time in bed, eating better.” Nana reached out and curled her fingers around my palm. “Which reminds me, you barely touched your lunch..” She clucked her tongue at me. “You’re losing weight.”
“It’s nothing.” After all the shit I’d gotten as a chubby teenager, it was crazy to even think that I was being chided for losing weight. “Just baby weight.”
Nana’s grip on my hand tightened. “It’s not.”
I looked away, knowing she was right. She’d brought over her famous honey-barbecue ribs for lunch, the kind she slathered with her secret recipe sauce and baked wrapped in foil until the last fifteen minutes of broiling to keep them juicy while the heat caramelized the outer layer. Alongside the ribs was a potato salad loaded with fresh herbs from her garden and crispy bacon; creamy mac and cheese with shell noodles and so much extra gouda that every scoop came with a massive cheese pull; a salad of fresh cucumbers and the first cherry tomatoes of the season, dressed with oil and lemon juice and Dijon mustard.
It was a feast that normally would have left me salivating, but what little I’d eaten of it, I’d had to choke down to be polite. Food didn’t taste any better than coffee to me anymore. My appetite was nonexistent. Even seated, the elastic on my leggings gaped loose at my waist.
“At least Mom will be happy,” I joked, though it wasn’t really that funny. At any sign of weight loss on my part, my mother was generally thrilled. Anything to get her daughter a little closer to a size four, whether it came from healthy eating or despair.
“Ah, your mother.” Nana winced. “About her.”
“Oh no.” There was a reason I hadn’t spoken to Mom since well before Easter. Actually, there were about twelve.
More drama from her was the last thing we needed now.
“It’s nothing bad,” Nana assured me in the most soothing tone she could muster. “She saw the interview on the news, is all.”
“And she’s pissed I didn’t tell her that I was pregnant?” She had to be. It wasn’t her style to take that gracefully. I could already imagine her reaction, the way her Botoxed brow line must have struggled to scowl. Who cared that my sons had been kidnapped? How dare I keep her out of the loop?
“Actually, no.” Nana must have seen my jaw drop. “I know. Surprised me, too. She knows there’s, ah… bad blood between the two of you, and she called me to ask if she’d be welcome in Evergreen again. I think she wants to patch things up.”
“Did she apologize to you?” That was part of the reason I wasn’t on speaking terms with my mother anymore. Last time I saw her, she’d been so rude to Nana that Xander had kicked her and her snooty boyfriend out of Nana’s house.
“Don’t you worry about me.” That was a no. “It’s you she’s thinking of right now.”
“If she wanted to apologize to me, she should’ve called me herself.” Even that was typical Mom, though. Testing the waters. Seeing what she might be able to get away with before she even considered doing the right thing.
“I think she wants to,” Nana said. “She’s just concerned she’ll overwhelm you.”
“I find that hard to believe.” Mom’s concerns were about vastly more important things. Like Birkin bags, lip filler, faking her age, and most of all, herself. Everyone and everything else tended to take the backseat.
“Stop making this about you!” she’d told me once as I desperately tried to scrub a bright red bloodstain out of her brand-new couch. “It’s my turn to be upset right now!” And never mind that I’d just started my first period. There’d only been so much room for emotions in her house, and she always claimed the lion’s share.
“Call her back or don’t, baby doll,” Nana said with a shrug. “But she sounded sincere. By my measure, that’s progress. You’ve gotta take whatever good the world gives you right now.” She leveled a meaningful gaze at me. “Even if it doesn’t come wrapped in the package you wanna see.”
