“Thanks,” she said, picking up a glue stick. “I swear, I can’t keep up with the pictures. These are from last year.”
I pulled up a chair from the side of the little room and spun it around, stretching out my long legs as I sat down beside her. My mom was so petite that I always felt like a giant when I was near her. From the time I was thirteen I’d been taller than she was, and we’d gotten a lot of speculating looks when she’d taken me into town for school clothes or other random shit, the small pale white woman bossing around the dark-skinned black kid who dwarfed her.
She’d never let those looks bother her, so I hadn’t, either—at least not out loud. I’d just raised my chin a little and walked a step closer, making sure that any comments directed toward her would have to go through me first. When I was a kid, it had worked. People had backed off a bit, unwilling to cause problems. As I’d gotten older, though, it seemed to have become harder for the population just to accept shit as none of their business. I never knew if it had been the change in my appearance or the social changes that had risen up around us, forcing people to take a second look and choose which side they wanted to be on. As if there were fucking sides to begin with.
“Dad should be home in a little bit,” Mom said, pulling my attention away from how her delicate hands placed small letters in an arch across the top of the page. “We’re grilling burgers if you want to stay.”
“Maybe,” I replied. “I actually wanted to talk to you guys.”
“About what?” She looked at me curiously.
“I think it’s time I head down to California,” I said quietly, watching her eyes flicker in barely disguised pain. “It’s been a few months and we’ve all cooled off—”
“You know I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she cut me off, her hands gone motionless on the table.
“Someone’s gotta go down there, Mom.”
“I should go,” she replied stubbornly.
“No,” I said with a swift shake of my head. I couldn’t imagine my mom going very far from home to begin with, but I refused to imagine her going to California to see Henry’s kid and getting shot down by the kid’s mother, or, even worse, being manipulated in order to have a relationship with the baby. It would completely devastate her.
“Trevor,” she said in warning, her back straightening away from her chair back. “I know you worry, son, but you have no idea how to handle situations like this. Birth mothers are—”
“Birth mothers?”
“Yes,” she said patiently, reaching out to pat my knee. “They’re protective.”
“And adoptive mothers aren’t?” I argued, clenching my jaw.
Mom laughed. “Please,” she joked. “I’d fight a mountain lion for my sons.”
“Then what are you—”
She stopped my sentence with a raised hand. “I should have said ‘mothers,’ okay?” she said with a small smile. “I meant all mothers. They’re protective. And if you go down there, being abrasive and throwing your weight around, she’s not going to want anything to do with us.”
“When am I ever abrasive?” I argued.
“You mean other than right now?” she asked drily.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go down there, Ma,” I said softly, unsure how to describe my reservations without insulting her.
“Agreed,” my dad said from the doorway behind us. “You know how I feel about it, El.”
“I’m not some piece of china,” Mom said in exasperation, glaring at her husband.
“You don’t know the woman—”
“I know her name. I know that she knew my boy—quite well if they had a child together. I know she’s raising that child without the help of my son, and has apparently been doing that since before he died!” I followed my mom as she rose indignantly to her feet.
“Trevor can go down and introduce himself,” my dad said, his eyes tightening at the corners and his voice deepening. “And you can be pissed all you want. I wanna meet Henry’s child as much as you do, but you are my priority, sweetheart.”
The worry in my dad’s eyes must have hit a switch inside my mom, because one second she was standing rigidly in the middle of the room preparing for battle, and the next she’d softened and was walking slowly toward my dad, wrapping her arms around his middle as he stood with his arms braced on each side of the door frame.
“When you thinking about heading down?” Dad asked as his arms wound around Mom’s shoulders.
“Next week,” I replied, leaning my hip against the craft table. “I’m gonna drive down so I’ve got my truck.”
“Shitty drive,” Dad said in commiseration. “You gonna stay with Shane and Katie? Maybe they’d come with you to meet the baby.”