“Full-time?”
“That’s what it sounds like.” She beams. “I never count my chickens before they hatch, but these eggs are starting to crack open.”
“Interesting analogy.”
Mom laughs. “Something smells good in here. Have you eaten?”
“I just threw some chicken and potatoes in the oven. There’s some left. Want me to make you a plate?”
She relaxes back in the chair and swirls her wine around in her glass. Seconds tick by, and she doesn’t speak. Instead, she watches me with a knowing and growing grin.
“I’m going to take that as a no,” I say and sit down in my chair across from her. Since she’s acting weird, I pour myself a little more wine.
“Coy called me today,” she says out of nowhere. “He said the doctor told Bellamy that the baby will be here any day now.”
I don’t know what my face does, but Mom laughs.
“What?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “It’s a boy, you know. It’s not going to be another Rosie to chase you around.”
“God took pity on me.”
Mom sips her wine, eyeing me over the rim in a way that makes me anxious.
“Did you come here for a reason?” I ask.
“Do I need a reason to visit my son?”
“No, but you have four others to choose from. I try to make myself as unpleasant as possible, so I never get chosen.”
She sets her wine down and laughs. “Wade, you are not unpleasant.”
“Then something is getting lost in translation.”
Though I fight it, we exchange a grin. She knows I don’t mind her visits.
She gives me a few moments of space without peppering me with questions or tossing whatever has sparked her arrival on my lap. It’s appreciated.
My mind is still busy sorting through the work I left unfinished on my desk, a design issue on the Greyshell project that’s challenging me, and Dara Alden.
I shift in my seat.
That woman was so damn irritating—and I’m not sold on why.
Sure, her bubbliness was a little much. The fact that she remembered our ridiculous speech was also suspect, and her penchant for pushing my buttons—shoving back when I pressed forward—was aggravating. But it doesn’t add up. None of those qualities are things that I haven’t experienced before her.
To top it off, she left things unresolved. Are we working together? Does she want to? What kind of structure does she want designed if we go through with this?
Do I want to go through with this?
I don’t fucking know. And I don’t fucking know when I’ll know how this is going to wind up.
“Are you okay?” Mom asks. “Your face is getting a little red.”
“I’m fine.”
She grins. “We’ll blame it on the wine.”
“Whatever makes you happy.”
Her hand stretches across the back of the chair next to her. A gold bracelet catches the light and sparkles.
“So, how’s Dad?” I ask, relieved to have found a new conversational topic.
“He’s doing well. Addictions are a process, and my therapist told me that this is something we’ll always have to contend with. But as long as he acknowledges his issues and continues his treatment and makes the right choices …”
The levity from earlier disappears from her face. In an instant, she looks more her age. She’s still beautiful and regal but weary. And that worries me.
I clear my throat. “Mom …”
She shushes me. “I don’t want to talk about me, Wade.”
“Well, I do.” I force a swallow down my throat. I don’t know if it’s the wine giving me a set of balls to challenge my mother or what, but here we are. “I appreciate your loyalty to Dad and the way you just raise your chin and get shit done, the way you take care of us all, but are you taking care of yourself?”
“Of course I am.”
“Are you?”
Her lips part as if she’s going to say something, but she closes them just as quickly. I don’t give her any room to wiggle out of the conversation. I just watch her—pin her to her chair—because at some point, she’ll finally give in.
She grips her wineglass with both hands as her shoulders fall forward. “I’m tired, Wade.”
“As you should be.”
“I keep telling myself that this season of my life will require more from me than some of the others. Like when you boys were small.” A faint smile touches her lips. “Holt was fourteen, Oliver nearly twelve. You were ten, Coy eight, and Boone just in kindergarten. When I tell you how exhausting that was, it doesn’t begin to cover it.”
I grin. “Should’ve stopped with Coy.”
As intended, this makes Mom laugh.
I sit back in my seat, my wineglass in my hand, and watch my mother. “You know,” I tell her, “I can understand some of that. I don’t know what it’s like to have kids, obviously, but I can reflect on different parts of my life and recall that what kept me going was simply the idea of getting through it.”