Page 62 of Left of Forever

I find my cell under the corner of the bed, then quickly dress and pad quietly outside, just in time for Mom to call again.

“Mom?” I say under my breath. It’s barely after 6:00A.M., so I don’t yet have a grip on my panic reflex.

“Hi, sweets,” she says in a singsong voice. “How’s it going?”

“Mother, are you okay? Is everything at the bakery all right?”

She tuts into the phone. “Oh, shoot. Did I call too early or something? I didn’t even look at the time, I guess. I just barely got to talk to you yesterday, and I wanted to hear about your birthday. I want to hear how the trip is going so far.”

Savannah Meridian is polite to a fault. Not a chance she forgot to check the time. I stop in the road and squint suspiciously out over the pond. “Fucking hell, Mom. It was you?”

“Me,what?” she crows.

“Mother.Did you change our reservation?”

She’s silent for five seconds too long. “I mean, for goodness’ sake, Wren, you’re on a trip with the man to decide if you should get back together or not. You might as well sleep together!”

“Wow.”

“And it sounds like such a lovely trip he’s planned, sweets.”

“Are you my pimp or my mom?”

“Oh, now, don’t be crass.”

“This coming from the same mouth that just implied that I owe a man some action for taking me on a vacation?!”

She sucks her teeth and makes an exasperated sound. “I saidsleeptogether. Figure out if you can stand to share a space again. That always seemed like the worst end of the deal to me.”

I start walking again, pulling my denim jacket tighter around me. “First of all, doeseveryoneknow that’s the real objective here? No one believed us about the casual friendship celebration trip, huh?” I say.

“Not for a second, dear.”

“Right,” I say. “But then… Does that mean you’re hoping itwon’twork out?” I start to chew on a nail. She’s always adored Ellis, but she’s also never tried to foist her feelings on me about the divorce. She understood it, encouraged me to maintain a healthy co-parenting relationship, and otherwise minded her own. Only since she met herman friend, David, last fall has she started to let a few opinions loose. I just figured she didn’t like the idea of me being alone when she wasn’t anymore, not that it specifically had anything to do with Ellis.

I hear her set a baking dish down hard. “Of course I want it to work out,” she says snappishly. “Of course I was hoping a little…mixing the battermight help you two work out a few things.”

“Could have gone my whole life without hearing that euphemism.”

“That boy,” she growls. “Thatman,” she corrects herself. “That man is the best sort of good. He’s the kind of good that doesn’t want to be seen or fussed over with accolades. He’s a man of action.”

“Oh, we’re back to action, are we?”

“Wren Salem, don’t be glib with me right now,” she says, and I’m shocked by the strictness in it. “I understand why you split before, mainly because I understand not wanting another person to have any influence over how you go about your life. I understand that marriage is highly inconvenient at best, and it’s paralyzing at its worst.”

“Most people would argue that marriage is convenient,” I say. Sharing money, meals, responsibilities.

“Most people are fucking idiots,” says Mom. I gasp playfully. A curse is a rarity coming from her. “All I know,” she continues, “is that you are both the sort of people who deserve all the best things, who deserve to be taken care of, but I don’t think either of you ever got to know how, because you were both always taking care of other people, or maybe… maybe in your case, it was that you had to take care of yourself because I wasn’t around more.”

“Mom, no.”

She cuts me off with a long sigh. “Trust me, sweets. I know I didn’t always provide the best example, but I think you can and should have everything you’ve ever wanted. Let yourself have it. Don’t be afraid to go after it again.”

“Mom, that is exactly what you showed me,” I say. “You were the best example when it came to that.”

She sighs again, but it’s laced with frustration this time. “I showed you that I didn’t need a romantic partner in life because I knew it was the safest bet, relying on myself and no one else.But even I had to ask for help from people sometimes, Wren. And no, I didn’t lack for a full life without romance, but… I’d had my heart broken once too many times and made all my decisions based on fear of it again thereafter,” she states. “Since I met David, I’ve seen that. And I’ve regretted it. But you’ve always been braver than I am, Wren.” She chortles. “Hell, even with what you bake, you are! The things you try sometimes!”

We catch up on the bakery after that, and she assures me things are all running smoothly.