Page 31 of Service Included

“What?” She stumbled into the doorjamb. How had the conversation with her daughter gone so off the rails? What the hell had she missed? “Is Grandma there now?”

She might still make it downstairs before he left. If he saw her on the porch, he’d know she wanted him to stay. He’d know. Please let Nico be filling out a form, playing a word game on his phone, anything to take his time before starting that van.

“You’re interrupting me, Mom.”

“Yes, I am. And I am unrepentant about it because you are using Grandma’s phone, so I can ask to talk to her.” Her free hand skimmed the railing as she hustled down the stairs. It would be easier to disconnect from her mother than her daughter, because she had decades of experience ignoring that guilt.

“What’s unpentent mean?”

“Un-re-pentent. It means sorry-not-sorry.”

She reached the hall.

“Now please give the phone back to Grandma.”

She pursed her lips in an exaggerated fishy face and then grinned at the girl on the screen. “I love you, Callista LaSorda.” Her daughter rolled her eyes, and then Megan saw jumbled images of a floor or ceiling and blobs of fingers as the phone transferred to Megan’s mother. Apparently, they’d entered the phase where endearments would chase the eight-year-old away, a development to be mourned later.

Nico had locked the front door behind him, which felt very final.

“Megan?” her mother said.

Outside, nothing lined the curb. The van had left. The porch was similarly bare, without the little table and chairs for drinks with neighbors.

“Yeah, um, sounds like it was a nice day.” The yard looked the same, well-tended garden beds filled with the leathery foliage of dozens of hellebores, chartreuse fountains of hosta leaves, and the burgundy splashes of heucheras.

“Callie kept us so busy. Did you get done over there at the house?”

“Yeah.” She hated heucheras and their stupid ruffled edges. And hostas were unbearably predictable. Within a week, they’d be ragged from slugs, while those white clusters of flowers on tall stems would become faded brown stalks. The wooden railing under her fingers was a splinter-risk and this yard was uninspired. Tidy and dull beyond belief. Her parents were better off without the work of the damn garden anyway. “Still a few things to arrange in my car.” By herself.

She didn’t know how they signed off, but it seemed like her phone had returned to her butt pocket, so she must have said goodbye.

Nico was gone. No matter how long she stood here, that wouldn’t change.

Answering her responsibilities had a cost. It always had a cost. She turned toward the house, part of her recognizing that she shouldn’t have expected or even hoped for more because that wasn’t how life went. Life was a slog of getting up and doing it again, and that didn’t mean moms like her doing a hot guy twice in one day. It meant day care pickup and family dinner and fucking laundry, that’s what doing it again meant.

Back inside. Fine. Might as well check the shelves in the garage to see if all three boxes of magazines were gone too or just the one she’d watched him put in the van.

As soon as she flicked on the garage lights, it was easy to see that two boxes remained in the nearly empty room. Coming closer, she noticed that the corner of a third sticky note protruded from under one of the cartons, which must have left the final box unlabeled and thus destined for donation. It was stupid to be upset about old magazines, a stupid waste of time and energy to care about them. The remaining boxes gave her a decade of trashy reading, so she didn’t need the third box at all. If she was going to feel stupid this afternoon, better the cause was a box than a guy. She was too old to get upset over stupid men who gave up too easily or couldn’t understand that answering the phone wasn’t a rejection.

There was a text from Aleesha that she’d overlooked.

Aleesha

Update on fine movers?

They left.

She had no idea how to express disappointment or shrugging or fatalism or whatever the emotions were that roiled through her via gif or emoji, so she changed the subject.

How did the march go?

Aleesha

Lots to tell. Wine tomorrow night?

She sent a photo of the Seattle skyline from the side of Lake Union, a bit of dock sticking out in the foreground.

Aleesha

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