Page 96 of A Much Younger Man
“I know, but—”
“It’s all right, sweetheart.” I reassured him without feeling at all reassured on my own behalf. I owed him that. He shouldn’t feel insecure because my parents had burst in on him. No doubt Mom laid one of her perfect information gathering snares and he fell into it like everyone did. That woman could have been the head of the CIA if her life had taken a different course. I should have been here to answer her questions, not Beck. I was the one who needed to take the heat from now on.
If I’d learned nothing else from Cooper and Shawn’s censure and Travis and April’s teasing jabs, it was that I didn’t have to listen to what they said. Or I could listen, but it was my business who I dated. Mom and Dad had no right to interfere.
“I missed you.” I kissed Beck’s forehead.
“Missed you too. Glad you’re home.” He melted into my body and stayed like that for a long time, letting me rock him back and forth with Callie happily leaning against our legs.
“Back soon,” I murmured before closing the bathroom door between us.
* * *
My mother had poured herself,my father, and me a glass of wine, and therefore it was painfully poignant when she then set a can of pop and a big glass of ice on the table for Beck. As an opening salvo, it was a masterful stroke of passive aggression I was sure we would all laugh about someday.
“So.” Dad tried to talk around the tension between the two of us as he always did. “Beck tells me you helped him out with Callie. She’s a wonderful dog. Reminds me a little bit of Lady.”
“Lady was the black Lab we had when I was a kid,” I informed Beck.
“Oh, yes. You loved that dog so much.” My mother sipped her wine. “She died when you were what, nineteen? You were devastated. You carried on as if the world had come to an end.”
“Judy,” my father warned.
“At that age, everything seems so much more painful, more permanent, more everything, don’t you think?”
“Mom, I was seventeen, and Lady’s death was permanent, and nobody even remembers that anymore.”
“That’s my point, darling.”
“We all got your point, Judy.” My father started to rise, but she turned to stop him.
“I’m not finished, Doug.” She turned to me. “Have you eaten, Lindy? You must be starving.”
“I’m fine. I planned on showering and hitting the sack.”
“You should at least have supper. I’ll go see what there is, or we can order out. Is that Chinese place still open?”
“I’ll be fine, Mom.” Ignoring my words, she went to the kitchen and searched through the drawer by the sink for takeout menus.
Dad stared at her with a bemused expression. Even he couldn’t figure out why she was doing this. It seemed surreal as if we were in a play and nobody knew their lines.
“I really just need about eighteen hours of sleep, and I’ll—”
“I’ve got it. Yen Chin. You still like pot stickers and Mongolian beef?”
“Mother—”
My father frowned. “Judith, please come back to the hotel with me. We can talk about this tomorrow.”
“No. I’m sorry. I really need to talk to Lindy right now.” She turned to Beck, and thank God, she spoke gently. “Beck, dear, you’d probably better go. Do you need a ride?”
“Mother.” I loved my mom, but this was a side of her I’d never seen before—or rather, I’d never seen that maternal steel in her spine unless it related to me.
The longer I waited for her to let me have whatever she was storing up in her outrage arsenal, the more inescapable the conclusion became. She was getting ready to blast me for my relationship with him onhisbehalf.
She met my gaze, and I instantly knew who she saw as the villain in the piece.
“I think it’s better if you go,” I told Beck. “I’m sorry.”
