Page 6 of Doran

“I just booked a test for Thursday.”

She squealed, jumping up and down.

“It’ll be the best thing ever, Mom! Just you wait and see.”

Caleb and Lucy came back, having also gone to wash their hands. She made a zipping motion across her lips, and I smiled. I was going to call Grammie after they went to bed and tell her. I knew she’d be ecstatic. Now, I just had to hope to make it to Thursday without freaking out and my parents finding out.

4

SARAH

Ward turned out to be a perfectly nice man. Like me, he’d been railroaded into coming. The part about him being divorced and ready to start dating again was true. So was the fact that he wanted a family and was open to dating a woman who already had kids. That didn’t mean he wanted friends and family meddling with ham fisted match making attempts any more than I did. A fact we bonded over when we noticed our hostess seating us at a table that did most assuredly not have four extra seats.

“I think we’ve been had,” he said drily. “Even more than I’d already suspected.”

“I think you’re right.” I took out my phone and called my mother. “Mom, where are you and Dad?”

“We’re at Angelo’s, dear. We’re just about to go in with the Winklemans to have dinner.”

I put her on speakerphone so Wade could hear.

“Angelo’s? Mom, you told me the Olive Garden, and they had a reservation under your name and everything.”

“Yes, well, Phyllis and I knew if we didn’t say we were all going, neither you nor Wade would show up. It was just a little white lie.”

He swiped a hand down his face.

“Grandma, lying is bad!” Lucy said, looking shocked.

“White lies are different, dear.”

“A lie is a lie,” Caleb disagreed, looking affronted at discovering his grandmother could be duplicitous.

“I’ve got to go, dear. We don’t want them to give away our table. You know how hard it is to get one at Angelo’s.” She disconnected the call.

“Can you believe that?” I asked Ward in disbelief.

“It’s a new low in my mother’s matchmaking efforts in the ‘get Ward to meet a woman’ column. There was also a ‘get Ward to meet a man’ one. Right after Diane left me, when I told her that I wasn’t interested in meeting any women, she got it in her head that I was coming out of the closet. I went to lunch with her a week later at the country club only to find she’d invited some friend of hers who’d dragged their gay son along. He was as mortified to be there as I was and couldn’t believe his mother did that. We had a laugh about it a few weeks later when I ran into him and his new boyfriend at the grocery store, as he’d ended up getting a phone number from one of the waiters and they became an item.”

I clapped my hand over my mouth. “Oh no!”

“Oh, yes,” he replied with raised eyebrows. “Now, I’m happy to stay and have dinner with you and your lovely children with no expectations beyond good food and even nicer company, or we can leave and pretend our mothers aren’t two conniving old women who should know better.”

I looked at the faces of my children who were eyeing the food surrounding diners were eating, looking wistful.

“Jimmy Glick has two dads,” Caleb announced, turning his attention back to our table.

“Does he?” Ward asked, turning his attention to Caleb. “Is he a friend of yours at school?”

Caleb nodded. “His dads are really nice.”

“I’m sure they are. There’s nothing wrong with two men or two women getting married as far as I’m concerned, but it was embarrassing because not only was I on a date when I had no idea I was going on a date before getting there. Plus, I’m not gay, so our mothers put us in an even more awkward position.”

My phone rang. It was my father.

“Hi, Dad? Mom already told me you guys are at Angelo’s.”

“She asked me to call, as she forgot to tell you to ask the hostess for the gift card we paid for. It’s got enough to pay for you and the kids to have whatever you want for dinner on it.”