Page 17 of From This Moment (After We Fall 4)
“Wes? Is that you? Come on in here,” she called from the great room.
I slipped out of my shoes in the foyer—house rule as long as I could remember—and headed into the great room, where she was curled up on one end of the couch reading a magazine and my dad was on his recliner doing a crossword puzzle. The TV was on, tuned to the baseball game, but the sound was off. I leaned on the far arm of the couch and eyed the screen, looking for a score.
“Well? How’d it go?” My mother’s tone was a little impatient.
“Great. Abby is adorable.”
“Isn’t she? Don’t you think she looks just like Drew?”
“I think she got the best of both parents.”
“Did she like her gifts?”
“Loved them. Put the dress on right away.”
She clucked her tongue. “God love her, did she really?”
“Mmhm.”
My mother set her magazine aside, got off the couch, and headed for the kitchen, her bare feet silent on the shiny wood floor. She pulled a big white casserole dish with a glass cover from the fridge. “Let me make you a plate.”
“Don’t bother, Mom. I ate at Hannah’s.”
“What?” She blinked at me like she must have misheard.
“I ate dinner at Hannah’s.” I braced myself for the icy wind about to blow through the house.
The casserole dish thunked on the granite counter. “Well…you didn’t tell me you were going to eat there.”
“I didn’t know. But she offered, and I was hungry. I’m sorry.” I tried to look as contrite as possible. “I’ll eat the mac and cheese for lunch tomorrow.”
Her chin jutted forward as she turned her back to me and slid the casserole back into the huge stainless fridge. “What did she make, pasta?”
I didn’t miss the snide note. I wondered how Drew had managed this—his mother’s obvious resentment of his wife. It was ridiculous, especially since Drew was gone. No wonder Hannah seemed reluctant to come over tomorrow. “Yes, pasta with tomato basil sauce. It was delicious.”
She didn’t say anything to that, just switched off the light in the kitchen and went back to her seat on the couch. “How’d the house look?” she asked, resettling on the couch. “Last time I was there it didn’t look too clean. But she works so much, I don’t know how she has time for housework, bless her heart.”
“The house looked fine.”
“What’s a six-letter word for ‘thinking only of oneself’?” my dad interjected.
M-o-t-h-e-r, I thought.
“Starts with a G,” he added. It was hard to tell if he was interrupting on purpose because he heard what my mother was doing, or if he was oblivious to our conversation. My dad could be wily sometimes.
“Greedy?” my mother suggested.
“Aha!” He pointed a finger in the air and filled in the squares with his pencil. “That’s gotta be it.”
“So Mom, how about having a cookout tomorrow on the beach? I invited Abby and Hannah to come over in the afternoon.”
“Did she say she’d come?”
“Yes. She works until two, but after that.”
My mother’s face brightened. “I could make sweet honey ribs. And salad with grilled peaches. Deviled eggs, and green goddess potato salad.”
“Don’t go to all that trouble. Really, I just wanted to cook some hot dogs and s’mores over a fire on the beach with Abby like Drew and I used to.”
