Page 25 of Not My Finest Hour

“Is she waiting for us right now?”

“I told her we’d leave as soon as you got home. I hope that’s okay,” she says, looking unsure of herself.

Some time to myself would’ve been nice. But any time to myself would’ve been spent dissecting my interaction with Justin today. So maybe it’s better that we leave because even though I acted like I was over him, I’m not. There was just something deeper that I felt with him. It goes back to that connection I thought we had. And I’m not talking about sex, although that was nice.

Sure, I’ve got Wesley now, and things went pretty well on our first date, but I don’t feel the same with him as I did with Justin. I’m sure once I get to know Wesley better, I’ll establish a connection with him too. I just need to give it time.

“Yeah, it’s fine. Let me change out of my work clothes, and then I’ll be ready.”

“I’ll wait for you in the car.”

That doesn’t leave me much time, so I hurry up and change into a sweatshirt and jeans, then head outside where Fern is in her car, letting it warm up. “Why are we going over to their house anyway? Aren’t they in the process of demoing the kitchen?” I ask once she pulls away from the curb.

“Well, I certainly wasn’t going to offer up our house for them to come over. Our place isn’t clean enough for Mom’s standards.”

She has a point. If Mom and Dad had come over, Mom would probably go through the house pointing out all the areas that could be cleaned better. “I thought I raised you better than this,” she’d probably say.

“How was work?” Fern asks.

“Work was weird.”

“Weird how?”

“Justin stopped by.”

“Justin is the one-night-stand guy, right?” And when I nod, she asks, “What did he want?”

“He wanted to apologize for the way things ended. And I don’t know this for sure, but it seemed like he wanted to get back together.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I told him I was seeing someone else.”

Fern is silent for a moment while we’re sitting at a traffic light. “And how do you feel about it?” she finally asks.

“I feel torn. On one hand, I miss him—a lot—and I’m also sad about the way things ended. But on the other hand, he’s the one who ended things. So even if we did get back together, how long before hiscode of ethicscomes between us again?”

She shrugs. “That I can’t tell you. Only you can know the right person for you. But if he went to the trouble to find you at your workplace, it sounds like maybe he’s putting his code of ethics aside, or maybe he’s found a way for the two of you to be together. You’ll never know now.”

“Is that supposed to help me? Because all you’re doing is confusing me more.”

Did I do the right thing by sending Justin on his way? I have no idea, but I’m not about to contact him and beg him to come back to me so we can talk things out. That’s an Old-Dahlia move, and that’s not me anymore.

Fern leaves me to my thoughts the rest of the drive, and when we arrive at Mom and Dad’s place, there’s a big dumpster in the driveway, forcing us to park on the street.

Their house is an older, single-story home on a quiet residential street in Bellevue. Most of the homes here are from the seventies and eighties, with a few on their street having updated the exterior to a more modern look. This house is the same one I grew up in, but very few of the people I grew up with still live here.

Dad greets us as soon as we enter the house, almost as if he’s been waiting for us. “Hey, girls. Thank goodness you’re here. Your mother has been driving me crazy today.”

“Why? What’s she been doing?” Fern shrugs off her coat and hangs it in the coat closet.

“She has no kitchen to speak of right now, but yet her bright idea tonight is to host a family dinner with nothing to cook on but a hot plate. I told her if she wants to have you two over, we should at least make it easy on ourselves and order takeout. But she wanted none of that, insisting that her hot-plate meal would be better than any takeout we could order.” He lets out a big sigh.

I chuckle. “How long have you been waiting to get that out?”

“Too long,” he says, then gives us each a hug in turn.

We walk through the plastic sheeting separating the living room from the kitchen, and step into what used to be the kitchen. They’ve made a lot of progress demoing the kitchen, but the base cabinets and the countertops are still in place. They’re too dusty to do any sort of cooking on, so Mom has set up a temporary work station in a sectioned-off area of the eat-in kitchen. She’s opening the lid of a pot on the hot plate, and she’s got some paper plates near her.

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