Page 29 of Cascade

I can hear her long before I see her when I reach the administration building on campus. My mother is president of Oak Creek College, a role she took on about 20 years ago. While she took over the world around Oak Creek, the four of us drove our dad insane at home—he stepped down from his job as a professor after Hunter was born. She often says he’s the only human patient enough to deal with all of our different quirks and she’s better off bossing people around until they donate money to the school.

She’s not wrong, but she’s also a tough person to work for.

Her voice echoes off the high ceilings and shiny hardwood floors. “Tina!” She yells. “Or is it Nina? We’ve got trustees coming in two days and I have no slides for my presentation.” I duck past her staff and lean against my mother’s open office doorway. She can’t seem to keep a communications director on her staff since my sister-in-law, Abigail, left the position to be a full-time novelist.

“You’re going to lose another one if you’re not nice,” I say, startling my mother and making her jump.

“Humph,” she pouts and looks at her watch. “Were we supposed to be meeting today? You look like a homeless man, by the way.”

She squints at her screen, staring at a spreadsheet full of numbers. I reach around and click the mouse to enlarge the data and she claps her hands, delighted. “Aha! Thank you, my sweet boy. Now, why are you in my office?”

“Can’t I stop by to visit my mother because I miss her?”

Rose Mitchell suffers no fools—she raises an eyebrow at me and leans back in her chair. I grin. “I was thinking ever since you told me about Mrs. McMurray…Dad and some of the Acorns have been nagging at me to hire someone else to handle the overflow at work. Thistle is a CPA…”

“Go on,” she says, a slight smile turning up the corner of her mouth.

“Well, I don’t want to just show up and knock on their door after ten years. Do you have Teresa’s number?”

“Archer, dear, you can’t just call her. She can’t speak.”

“Oh.” I hadn’t thought of that. “Well, what do you recommend?”

“Come on,” she says, standing up and closing her laptop. “Let’s walk and get a pastry. I need a break.”

I hold the door for Ma and salute her new communications director, who looks like she’s been to war as she fights with the printer to spit out a slide presentation in full color. My mother continues talking. “I am glad your father is talking to you about changing your habits, Archie. It just can’t be healthy to keep such odd hours and then show up at work in your sweatpants like a first year college student.”

“I don’t always wear sweatpants, Ma,” I say, gesturing down at my khakis. “I put on regular clothes if I’m meeting a client.”

Ma sniffs and gestures her head toward the Insomnia Bakery, a little shop run by a pair of exhausted parents with twin sons at home. Jessica, a pleasant woman with bags under her eyes and corn rows piled on top of her head in a bun, brightens when we walk in the door. “Dr. Mitchell,” she says, beaming. “Thank you again for hiring us to cater the board meeting tomorrow.”

“Well who else would I get,” Ma says with a wave of her hand. “My trustees want the best, and the best they shall have.” She glances over her shoulder at me. “Archer is in need of sustenance,” she says. “Do you have one of those ham sandwiches? With the little pickles inside?”

Jessica reaches for my favorite sandwich as I realize my mother is right—about my situation and about my appetite. I must have worked through lunch again. I really haven’t been making great choices. I work all night and then sleep all day and it takes me a few weeks to get my circadian rhythms back in check. And I dive so deeply, so methodically into my client work that I don’t take time to stop and move my body or eat any food.

Ma gets herself a scone and picks at it, watching me inhale the sandwich. “This bread is amazing, Jess,” I tell her, and she smiles as she pulls a rack of baguettes from the oven behind her. I know these sandwiches are her top seller for lunches, because I do her taxes, but also because it’s an unusual and delightful combination of flavors. I start thinking about buying one of these for Opal, and then I remember that she’s not speaking to me again.

“I bet she’d answer the door for a sandwich,” I mutter, and only realize I’ve said it out loud when my mother recoils and says, “Archer, don’t you think you’d have better luck with flowers as a first gesture? It’s been a decade…and I doubt Thistle eats animal products…”

Right. The McMurrays. I clear my throat and wipe my mouth with a napkin. “So the thing is I really do need to make some changes,” I tell her as she nods. “Having an employee will be good for me—take some of the load off. Give me some external motivation to balance work and life a little better.”

“You could stop running at all hours of the night,” my mother says, patting my hand. “I hear tales from the waste management staff. One of these days a gator hauling trash bins is going to flatten you like a filthy pancake.”

“Anyway,” I tell her, “I figure why not Thistle? She’s probably only here temporarily, right? And I already know her, and she knows the town. Seems like maybe we can both benefit.”

My mother considers this and sighs. “I assume you told Fletcher and he got upset and that’s why you’re running it past me? For validation that it’s ok to hire your brother’s ex girlfriend in a professional capacity?”

She can always cut through to the heart of an issue and she doesn’t really pad her observations. “Pretty much,” I tell her. “He sounded like he was throwing a chair when I brought it up.”

Ma reaches out and twirls her fingers through my overgrown hair curling over my shirt collar. “You do need to make some changes, darling.” I nod. “I think you should get a haircut and then go pay a visit to Teresa and Thistle.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Opal

I CHECKED IN on Abigail, and she’s doing great!Archer’s texts come in once or twice a day, his calls a little less frequently. I told Pam I’m not sure why I’m not responding to them. I was hoping she’d make some sort of grand declaration, tell me what I’m really thinking and what I’m supposed to do, but she says, “Therapy doesn’t really work that way, I’m afraid.”

I sit tapping my foot impatiently in the arm chair in her office, biting my fingernails. “I told him things I have never told anyone before,” I tell her. “Not ever.”

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