Arabella’s mom picked up on her line of questions.
“Did you grow up here in Cincinnati, June?”
“Actually, I did,” June responded smoothly. She left it at that, and that
seemed to satisfy the ques
tion. It wasn’t that Arabella wanted to hide a
bunch of stuff from her parents, she would just rather let them in on all the
details when they knew June better.
“Do you want a family? Kids? Marriage?”
“Da-ad!” Arabella wanted to move her mug and drop her head smack
down on the table. “Those kinds of questions are off limits. We haven’t
been dating that long. If you want me to keep having a girlfriend and not
scare her off, you shouldn’t ask things like that.”
“Are they hard things?” As if her mom didn’t know the answer to that.
“No, it’s fine.” June freely set her fingers on Arabella’s hand right there
on top the table. “I know that forty is the new twenty and more and more
people are putting off having kids until they’re older and more settled. They
want the career first, all the life experiences before they have a family. I
guess I fall somewhere in the middle on that. I’m very career oriented, but
I’ve done a lot of the things I’d like to do, and I know I could leave the co
—I mean, my position in more than capable hands if I wanted to take a year
off or more to start a family. I think I’m just like everyone else in that I’d
like to find the right person and get to know them for a number of years and
enjoy our time together as a couple before I would like to talk about
marriage and kids, but of course I want them.” Her fingers flexed over
Arabella’s when she said right person and Arabella’s heart started to beat
that much faster.
Her tear ducts were acting up again, and so she cleared her throat and
sipped at her tea, which was still incredibly hot despite the liberal dousing
of cold cream she’d given it. “I think that’s enough of the hard questions.
How about commenting on how hot it’s been or, Dad, you could talk about