Page 4 of Their Stormy Reunion

After I finished my banana and threw away the peel, I saw the garbage needed to be taken out. Dad had been right to have me come home.

“If you give me a list, I can go to the store.” I kept my voice soft. Kind.

“You decide. You’re going to take over, anyway,” her voice cracked.

If it had been nine years ago, my mom would’ve spun around and marched out of the kitchen, but it wasn’t nine years ago. She slowly turned and walked slow and stiff out of the kitchen, her pain obvious. I preferred it when she’d marched.

“Why didn’t you call me as soon as you arrived?” Maddie Avery said as she came up behind me in the checkout line in Roger’s supermarket. “You need a wingman.”

I spun around and just stopped from squealing. Maddie wrapped me up in a huge hug, and I started to tremble. I hadn’t seen her face in three years. Three years too long. And after some of the looks I’d gotten as I went down the cramped aisles, I needed to see her smile.

“How did you know I was here?” I whispered into her ear.

“Roger called me. He saw what was happening.”

That made me tremble even more. I’d stocked shelves here one summer, and he’d always said I was his best worker. I’d looked for him, but I hadn’t seen him. Apparently, he’d seen me. And he’d done something to help me.

“Come on, let’s get your stuff on the belt, before Amanda pops her cork.” I looked up to see the young cashier glaring at the two of us. When I looked behind us, there was nobody else in line.

“We’re not holding anybody else up,” I pointed out.

“There could be somebody coming soon. It’s busy today,” Amanda grumbled.

That was a blatant lie, and I also saw her phone by the register, logged into some kind of video app. I started to slowly take my items out of the cart. Very slowly. Maddie chuckled and didn’t help me, instead she kept talking.

“So, how’s life in the big city been treating you? Last I heard, your consulting firm was developing some architecture with coffee programmers?”

I laughed. Maddie always asked what my company was doing to be nice, but tuned out my answers. “We created architectural designs by implementing Java-based solutions when we migrated the company’s outdated systems into something more streamlined based on their business needs. That was a long project.”

“How many people did you have to hire for that project?” Maddie asked, as I put the last two items on the belt.

“At the most intense phase of the project, we had eighteen. They were a good client.” I smiled. I wished every client was as easy to work with. The one I had now required a lot of personal handholding. Coming home couldn’t have come at a worse time.

“How are Mr. and Mrs. Frosty?”

I grimaced. That had been Maddie’s nickname for my parents for years, and considering the shitty parents she had, it was amazing she had anything bad to say about anyone else's.

“They’re the same. I’m trying to gauge how sick Dad is, and Mom’s arthritis is so much worse than when I left.”

“Is she doing anything about it?”

I watched the bagger take care to gently place the eggs and bread in one bag. I swiped my card and took my receipt from Amanda. Before the bagger had put the last bag in my cart, I heard some new silly video playing.

As I left through the sliding glass doors, I waved up at the security camera and mouthed the words, ‘thank you,’ knowing Roger would eventually see that.

Maddie walked with me to my Audi SUV and helped me load up my supplies.

“So. Do you know if your mom is taking care of her arthritis?”

“I don’t know anything. I just got here three nights ago. Mom’s either freezing me out or angry as hell. She says that Dad wants to get out of bed. When I asked about his condition, she said it was complicated and too many doctors were involved. I’m hoping since Dad was the one who asked me to come home, he’ll be a little less reticent to tell me what’s going on.”

Maddie snorted. “Yeah, sure.”

“I don’t want this to be all about me. What about you? Last we talked you were dating a doctor in Nashville.”

“That didn’t work out. It took me four months to trust him enough to tell him the Avery Family saga, after that he pulled the dick move of being constantly unavailable.”

“Forcing you to break up with him, cause he had teeny-tiny balls.”