Page 7 of Amaze Me

Chapter Four

~ Judd ~

I wouldn’t call last night a rip-roaring success. We’d talked over dinner, pretended everything was fine—which had become an evident necessity in the truck when I realized I was driving her to shut down, rather than open up. We talked about her job at Jilly B’s. She really seemed to love it, and it made me think more about the surprise I’d been working on for her. A surprise I’d had to sideline temporarily when she left me, and I wasn’t sure if there was a point to it anymore.

She asked me about the two new mazes I’d done. Her eyes always glowed with interest when we talked about the designs and implementation. Sometimes, when I planned them in the past, she’d made suggestions for “easter eggs” to plant in the mazes for people to find.

As if sensing the topic of discussion, I’d received several calls from Greta over dinner. Calls I’d dodged. I wouldn’t work while Mimi and I were trying to connect. And I certainly couldn’t tell Mimi what I’d done to the annual Lover’s Lane maze for the Sweetville County Fair.

I wouldn’t be able to dodge it forever, though.

Leaning on the counter that next morning, resting on one forearm, I stared into my murky coffee. It was terrible. Mimi’s was a thousand percent better, and not just because it was made with love. She might think she didn’t have talents in the kitchen, but her coffee was the best. So was her apple breakfast cake.

But I had neither of those. Nope, I just had my burnt tasting coffee and the couple store-bought sandwich cookies I’d pulled out of the cupboard. Breakfast of the champions, right there.

A knock banged on my house’s back door a moment before my oldest brother, Wilton, wrenched it open. Leaving it propped open with his hand on the knob and his body leaning against the frame, not allowing the screen to close either, he glared at me.

“You coming to work, or are you stewing in here like a baby all day.”

Older brothers. They were the best, right?

“I’ll be out in a few. I got up late.”

His arms crossed, but his big body still held the door open, likely letting in all the bugs in the county. “Uh-huh. And how was thedatewith your wife?”

I stared at him and considered not answering. It had been pretty crappy, considering we hadn’t been able to delve into the mire between us. Worse, she wouldn’t let me kiss her goodnight when I’d left her at the door of her horrible, tiny, poorly furnished apartment.

“Fine.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah, well, you’re pouting and she’s not here, so I doubt that.”

“Leave it be,” I growled before lifting my coffee and taking a sip. I grimaced and started to put it back down before I changed my mind, leaned over and dumped it into the sink. Ignoring Wilt, I grabbed a single-serve orange juice from the fridge. Cracking it open, I drank and looked anywhere but at him. The house needed to be cleaned. Mimi probably left because she was tired of me being a slob.Thatalong with her other reasons.

Apparently, Wilt decided to ignore me right back. He stepped into the room, allowing the screen to slam behind him.

“What’s going on with you guys anyway? Figure it out?”

“No. Have you noticed anything weird going on around here? You know, like Ma—”

“You mean like Mom treating Mimi like an interloper, acting like she can’t do anything right and butting in and shooing your wife away whenever she’s interacting with customers at the stand. Yeah. If she was my wife, I’d be having a flat-out rage over it.”

The heck…

How did my brothers know this and I didn’t?

“From the look on your face, I’d say you didn’t know about it. Morrie and I thought you did. But since you’re away a lot, maybe we should have figured you didn’t. We tried to step in a couple times, but Mimi always said she was fine.”

“She wasn’t.” I wanted to swear a blue streak over this new information. I’d always thought she and my ma got along fine. My mother had sure been excited when Mimi and I had finally got married. She’d immediately started going on about how she’d at last have grandkids from us, since Wilt and Morrie hadn’t settled down.

And that was another issue.

“Have you heard her, uh, make any comments about kids?”

Wilt screwed up his face, thinking. “Nothing I know of other than… Oh criminy. She made some comments about Mimi resting. And about taking some burden off you if she wasn’t going to get knocked up.”

“Cheezits!” If my mom was making comments to Mimi when she already felt down on herself for not getting pregnant and feeling as if she wasn’t good enough, that would have acerbated the situation. It wasn’t as if we hadn’t been trying. It wasn’t as if Mimi could control that, either.

My hands shook with my barely contained fury. I’d never been so angry with my mom—even in my hormonal teenage years when I’d deemed everything unfair.

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