Page 43 of Clean Sweep
His melodic voice came out gentle, but this time with an unusual roll to it. It sent a shiver down the back of my arms, and I felt a moment of gratification that at least aging hadn’t taken awaythatresponse.
Everything changed in your forties—some of it for the good. But I missed the naiveté of youth sometimes. When you had a whole life offirst’sahead of you. First butterflies. First kiss. First boyfriend. First hickey. At forty-something, I’d done and felt most of it. I missed feeling uninhibited and naive about what came on the other side of emotions.
“You really want to know?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“But . . . why?”
He laughed. “Because I canalmostcompetently coordinate my life and my teenage daughter’s life. Can’t fathom a powerhouse family like the Mercedy’s swooping in and expecting me to make it perfect. Not to mention four boys, a career, and a house. It’s fascinating to watch.”
When he stated it like that, it sounded far more flattering than it was.
“Well, it’s stressful, but it’s mostly about organization. Maverick is a teddy bear that’s secretly a hot mess, Bethany is pregnant so she doesn’t care about anything but sleeping and getting the baby out, and Serafina is just trying to keep Benjamin from imploding while around his family for so long. In the end, the bar isn’t set that high.”
Tanner laughed and the sound brought a reluctant smile to my face. Yeah, I could deal with more of that in my life, even if I’d spent all this time trying to pretend I didn’t care. I leaned against the house and peered out on my dead garden.
“I take it you don’t come from a big family?” I asked.
“Nah. One brother, younger than me. Celeste is my only daughter, and my parents died a couple years apart around ten years ago.”
“Lone man.”
“Not really.” He had a shrug in his voice. “I’ll always have Celeste, in some form.”
“Do you ever get tired of being the only parent? This crap isn’t easy. I mean, Ethan didn’t do a lot but once he was gone I realized his presence was more helpful than I thought. He at least took out the garbage, or got after the boys when they didn’t.”
The question slipped out of me before I could stop it, but I couldn’t say that I regretted it.
Ethan and I hadn’t been bastions of communication at any point in our marriage, but there had been connection in the mindless prattle ofsomeoneto talk at that I missed. I kept some of that from my boys. Blake didn’t need the burdens of his mother, and Ethan hadn’t, apparently, wanted my prattle anymore.
“I think you get used to it,” Tanner replied. “It just becomes the new normal.”
My brow furrowed. “I’ve only been divorced a year—almost two if you count when we started to talk about separating—and I’ve been fine with it so far. Even if I act dramatic about it. I wonder sometimes what this will feel like in five or ten years, though. If the quiet just becomes too much.”
“Depends on how quiet you let it get,” he said.
“Fair.”
“What about you?” he asked. “Siblings?”
“Three. I’m the oldest. My younger siblings all have similar versions of a family and a picket fence, just scattered across the country. My parents are both alive, happy in a retirement home near a golf course. I’m absolutely as ordinary as it comes.”
“That,” he said quickly, “doesn’t seem right at all. Ordinary is not a word I would have used to describe you.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Not even a little.”
The last thing I wanted to do was fish for compliments, but he’d baited me there. How could Inotpress for details?
“I’m a previous stay-at-home-mom that divorced after twenty-five years of marriage. I manage a coffee shop to keep food on the table and I have four intelligent boys with varying levels of stupid they interact with on a daily basis. There’s not much less exciting than that.”
“Huh. That’s interesting,” he murmured, “because I see someone totally different.”
My mouth went dry, hungry to beg him for details. Desperate to know what could set me apart in this world that didn’t relate to my last twenty-five years of life.
Some shred of evidence that proved I hadn’t given my entire self over to marriage and babies and now had nothing left to hold up and say,this is me.
