Page 34 of The Woman in the Garage

“Yeah. My parents actually didn’t want kids,” she admitted. “You wouldn’t have known that with how good my mom was while I had her. But it was very clear that my father had no time or patience for a kid. Especially a girl,” she told me as we walkedinto the shop, her head tipped up to read the menu as we got in line.

“That sucks, sweetheart.”

To that, she shrugged. “I was a pretty extroverted kid. I made friends easily. Spent time with their—happier—families. I had a good childhood, all things considered. I mean, the stepmoms were… an experience.”

“Evil stepmother sorts?” I asked.

“It was more that some of them were in their twenties. My father is a doctor,” she said as if that explained everything. “They’re… notorious horndogs,” she told me. “Two of those wives were nurses he worked with. The third was a pharmaceutical rep. So it was really more like having awkward big sisters than it was having any kind of mom figures.”

“Is his current wife that young?”

“No. This one is actually an appropriate age. Actually, she might be the exact same age as him. She was a paramedic and wanted nothing to do with him for years. She said she had his number and she wasn’t going to fall for good bedside manner rebranded as workplace flirtation.”

She liked the current stepmom. It was there in the way her smile made her eyes crinkle, in the warmth in her voice.

“How’d he win her over?”

“He had a heart attack,” Dasha said. “She was the one who kept him alive on the way to the hospital. She said it was the first time she saw him as a man, not a doctor. They’ve been together ever since.”

“But they live abroad?” I asked.

“Sasha has a lot of family in Spain. After a bunch of holidays there, they finally decided to move.”

“Leaving you here by yourself?”

“I was twenty-one at the time,” she said, shrugging it off. “I was more about friends and fun than I was about family. AndSasha always reminds me that they have room for me. That probably sounds crazy to you,” she said as we moved up in line. “It sounds like your family is very close.”

“They are. Some might say too close.”

“How can you be too close with someone?”

“Mandatory family dinners.”

“Sounds really lovely.”

“Sometimes, the aunts will sneak into your house and stuff your freezer with meals.”

“Sounds incredibly convenient. And I bet they’re all amazing cooks.”

“The best around. Put the food at Lucky’s place to shame.”

“That is hard to imagine.”

Suddenly, I was picturing climbing out of the car at my mom’s house, of walking hand in hand inside, of introducing her around, of sitting next to her at the table as she soaked up the atmosphere, as she tasted the food.

Now, I’d always known I would settle down eventually, that I’d have a girlfriend or wife with me at family functions. But I’d never pictured who that woman might be.

But here I was, imagining that woman as Dasha. When I hadn’t even kissed her yet.

“Hi!” she greeted the woman in the black baseball cap behind the counter. “We’re great, how are you?”

She wasn’t faking that friendliness either. There was something really charming about how sweet and open she seemed to be with everyone.

Then, unwanted, the memory of her anxiety at her shop popped up in my mind. Then, immediately following that, the one about her employee raising his voice to her.

Unexpectedly, anger boiled in my gut, making me want to charge back to the repair shop, round up those mechanics,and demand to know who’d been making her so anxious and unhappy at her own damn business.

“Santo?” Dasha asked, pulling me out of the thoughts that had my hands balling up into fists.

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