She smiles as though her actions, and her tea, are totally normal, which they are not. “The tea is fine, honey. Maybe you don’t know what flavor is.” She tilts her head, one shift away from a neck roll and I know true fear. If Mom can do the whole sassy neck roll correctly, I will know that I’ve surely entered the Twilight Zone. “And I’m just fixing some flyaways in case you want to take some pictures for your page,” she explains as the infamously eerie theme music starts.
Doo-doo-doo-doo . . .
That makes zero sense.
Mom is completely supportive of my work, but she doesn’t exactly understand it. And my photo habits are not something she thinks of . . . ever.
“I probably will take some pics, but it’ll be close-ups of flowers, playing up the whole garden angle. So my hair and a little dirt won’t hurt,” I tease.
Mom smiles back, unconvinced.
I set my tea down. “Ready to get to it?”
Mom agrees, and we make our way back over to the garden. Mostly, we’re weeding, pulling up some of the junk that always invades Mom’s garden area between the end of the fall harvest and her first planting of the spring.
“Where’s Dad today?” I ask after a bit.
Mom’s brow furrows, and she thinks for a moment. “Today? Malaysia. According to him, it’s all insanity and monkey business. Literally, supposedly. Something to do with coconut imports and labor standards. He said I should have joined him since you and River are out of the house now, but I told him there was no way I could put enough sunscreen on for Malaysia. Now if he gets an assignment to Paris or Oslo, we can talk then!”
“You’d love Paris, I’m sure, but Oslo? Better pack a parka.”
My dad has traveled for work since before I can remember—here, there, and everywhere. I’m not exactly sure what he does, some sort of consultant about export and import laws and regulations for the United States. But no matter where he was, he always made it home for anything truly important. Like Mom, I realize how special Dad is too.
“I can make anything look good, even a parka,” she tells me, striking a pose. Truthfully, she can.
A loud vehicle breaks through the quiet of the small neighborhood, and I wonder who . . . and what . . . that could be.
I stop, listening as the growling diesel engine pulls up out front. Mom looks more than a little eager as she gets up and hurries toward the garage. “Mom? Who’s that?”
Before she can answer heavy bootsteps tread through the garage and a man calls out. “Mrs. Watson? I got the fertilizer you were asking for and . . . oh, hi.”
A guy walks out into the sunlight, a big bag of what I can only assume is fertilizer over his shoulder. With dark brown hair that’s flopped over one eye, a tight T-shirt that shows off an impressive set of biceps, and a day’s growth of stubble on his lean cheeks, he looks like he just stepped out of an old Fifth Harmony video, right down to the slight translucence of his sweat-soaked shirt making his muscles stand out all the more.
“Honey, this is Kyle,” Mom says with so much false innocence I want to roll my own neck. Or maybe snap hers. I mean, this Kyle’s got a fifty-pound bag on his shoulder, and Mom never uses that much gardening chemicals. Hell, you could fertilize half the neighborhood with that thing. “He’s the new gardener I hired to help with the lawn and getting the garden in this year.”
Mom looks at Kyle like he’s the answer to all her prayers. And I don’t mean the garden of her dreams.
“Mom!” I whisper, pulling her aside. “Does Dad know about your ‘gardening’?”
Mom gives me a puzzled look for a second. “What? Dad doesn’t care about the garden.” At my wide eyes, she realizes what I’m saying. “Honey, did you . . . oh, Riley, you silly girl! Did you think I hired a little eye candy while your father is away?”
I blush, looking down. Did I really just think that? I mean, Mom would never cheat, but looking isn’t buying, as they say. “Well, I mean . . . no. But it could happen, and—”
“Honey, your father is all the man I could ever need,” Mom assures me. She looks over at Kyle, who looks a little confused by our conversation out of his earshot. “I asked him to help, not for me . . . but for you.”
Oh. My. God. She set all of this up just to get me to meet some guy? “Mom! What the actual hell?”
But she’s back to playing hostess with the mostest to Kyle. “Kyle, this is my daughter, Riley.”