Page 29 of For The Weekend
“I don’t know. I’m busy.”
“Why don’t you put it in your calendar?” she suggests and then immediately asks, “What time are you coming on Sunday?”
Confused, I pause to think. I was told I had to be there at noon to help set up the party or whatever. My mother was the one who told me. “Twelve,” I say eventually. “I?—”
“Why? I told you I need you there earlier. You?—”
“You didn’t. You didn’t tell me I needed to be there earlier.”
“I texted you last week.”
I close my eyes and bite my lip. She’s right. I saw the text, but I was literally elbow-deep in dirty water when it came through on my phone. I told myself I’d put it in my calendar, then evidently forgot all about it until now. “Okay, so I’ll be there at eleven.”
Though I can’t help but poke the bear. If only to prove she really thinks I’m an idiot. “If you knew you told me, why did you call to ask what time I’ll be there?”
“Because I don’t trust you to be anywhere on time.”
“Thanks for that,” I say, bending over to put my elbows on the counter. “Really… Feels great knowing you’re in my corner.”
“Don’t be so condescending to me. I know how you are, that’s all.”
“Yes, and clearly, you hate it.”
“I don’t hate it, Eloise, but you’re always so sensitive about it. I called you because I knew you wouldn’t remember, so here I am telling you. I will be there with your aunt at eleven, so I don’t have to hear about how I don’t help her out ever, and I need you there to prove it.”
I nod to myself. Because that’s how it always goes.
“But while I have you on the phone, I was thinking about asking Sandy’s son to come to the wedding with you.”
“Sandy, as in the lawyer you work with?”
“Yes, and?—”
“Her son as in Eddie, the kid I used to babysit?”
“Yes, and he’s not a kid anymore. He’s?—”
“A sociopath.”
“Don’t talk like that. It’s not very nice.”
I huff. My mother, the queen of nice.
“No. I’m not going to the wedding with Eddie, the kid who karate-kicked the TV onto the floor when I told him it was time for bed and then tried to stab me with a screwdriver.”
“He was five. Don’t be so dramatic.”
“I’m not being dramatic.” Irritation makes the skin on the back of my neck prickle with sweat. “That’s what happened.”
Back then, I also heard that he pushed his sister down the stairs when she was two, and she busted her face in multiple places.
“So what?” Mom asks, and my voice is completely shrill when I parrot her.
“So what?” I pivot in a circle. “Am I living in the Upside Down?” Of course she doesn’t know what the Upside Down is, and I charge on. “So, at best, he was a brat back then. At worst, a serial killer in the making.”
Leonard catches my eye and raises his brow in silent question. I shrug.
“He graduated college now and is working in insurance,” my mother tells me. “I figured I can get Sandy to ask him.”
