Total pages in book: 76
Estimated words: 73699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73699 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 368(@200wpm)___ 295(@250wpm)___ 246(@300wpm)
Stuffy as heck.
No casual meals are eaten around a friendly kitchen table, no snacks to be nibbled at the kitchen counter. Meals, even breakfast, were formal, seated affairs in the dining room.
Even the before dinner ritual had been stuffy, with mandatory “cocktails, conversation, and nibbles” in the parlor, and don’t even think about showing up in bare feet, shorts, or with messy hair.
Growing up, “cocktails” had meant lemonade or Shirley Temples for me, but I’m most definitely planning on a more adult beverage option tonight. For obvious reasons. Sure enough, I find my mom exactly where I expect to—in the parlor, and again the sheer familiarity of the moment washes over me.
Mom turns to face me, and the butterflies dislodge from my stomach and seem to lodge in my throat when I meet her familiar blue eyes.
She looks the same. Same pearl necklace, same muted red lipstick, same shoulder-length bob, and perfect posture.
But not exactly the same. Like the street outside and the home itself, there are subtle changes. Soft changes. Crepe paper lines around her eyes and silver mixed in with the straight blond hair.
My mom’s gaze, too, is softer than I remember it being, though just for a moment before she lifts her chin slightly. “Charlotte. Good, you’re here. You’re still on that lax California schedule, I suppose.”
My mother, ladies and gentleman. Let the record state that I’m exactly three minutes past her five o’clock summons.
“Where’s Dad?” I ask, glancing around the room, then doing a double take. There’s a man standing at the wet bar, but it’s most definitely not my father.
“What are you doing here?” I blurt out.
“Charlotte, be polite,” Mom says, not liking my West Coast manners any more than she likes my willy-nilly time table, apparently.
Colin idly lifts a cocktail glass in greeting. “Wife.”
“You said you had plans,” I accuse. I haven’t seen him since he left our place around noon.
“I do, and they involve Sunday dinner with Eileen and Paul.”
“Since when has your weekend plans involved dinner at my parents’?”
“Since always,” my mother answers for him. “Colin, would you be a doll and fix Charlotte something to drink? I’m going to go find your father. He’s out in the garden again, doting on his herbs. And then I’d like a nice glass of white wine when I return.”
Herbs? The father I remember tolerated the outdoors to golf, and only then when it was to advance a business deal. He most certainly didn’t go outside willingly. And he’d never dote.
I stare after my mom’s back as she leaves the room then shake my head. “I can’t figure out what’s more surprising: that you do regular dinners with my family or that my dad has an herb garden.”
Colin shrugs. “It’s been part of his quest to figure out what he wants to do with his life after retirement. Model airplanes, photography, and writing the next great American novel have all been ruled out,” Colin says, not turning around as he fixes a drink at the bar.
“You know him better than I do,” I murmur, walking toward him.
He glances down at me as I approach, his gaze skimming over my outfit. His expression is detached, as usual, but I don’t miss the way his eyes linger on the V-cut of my camisole before dropping to my leather pants.
“Nice outfit. Where’d you park your motorcycle?”
I let out a little laugh and accept the drink he holds out.
“What is this?” I take a sip and smile. “A Vesper.”
He shrugs, reaching up to pull down a wine glass, filling it from a bottle of white wine chilling in an ice bucket. He sets it aside, presumably for my mom, then picks up his own glass once more.
“You really come here every Sunday?”
“Most.”
“Why?” I ask, trying to wrap my head around why a grown man would willingly put himself in this situation on the regular.
“I enjoy your parents.”
“Really.”
He looks away. “It’s nice. To have people in the city to …” He clears his throat. “I don’t have family in the city. And neither do they.”
There’s no accusation in his tone, but I feel the guilt all the same. I left. Justin left. Colin stayed.
I suppose a son-in-law who stayed beats a daughter who left.
“She’s glad you’re here,” Colin says softly.
I’m startled by the comment, but before I can respond, my mother sails back into the room, surprisingly graceful for a woman on the north side of her sixtieth birthday.
My father’s right behind her, and my heart squeezes at the sight of him. I don’t know what I was expecting, given this whole herb garden hobby. Overalls. Dirt under the fingernails. A beard.
But he looks the same. There’s no sign of stoop in his broad shoulders. His hair is more salt than pepper now but still thick and perfectly combed into the same side part he’s worn my entire life.