Chapter 20: Mom

My mother's rental car came up the drive at three the next afternoon.

Cal was off the porch before it stopped.

He had not cooked.

He had cleaned the kitchen twice instead, and moved the couch an inch to the left.

Bridget got out in her Arizona sunglasses with a canvas bag over one shoulder.

She did not look at me.

She looked at him.

"Come here, you," she said.

He crossed the gravel, and she took his face in both hands.

She had to reach up to do it.

"You're thin," she said.

"I'm fine, Bridget."

"You're thin, and you're an idiot, and you're my son."

His face did something I had never seen it do.

"Both of you," she said, over his shoulder, to me. "Mine, and mine. Is that clear to the whole county?"

"It's clear, Mom."

"Good. Where's the cat?"

She was kind, and she was dry, and she was terrifying.

She stood in Cal's kitchen and ate three of the cookies a neighbor had left on the porch.

I told her the parts she had missed, from the toast to the iPad.

She did not interrupt.

At the end, she took off her sunglasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose.

"Haley has been in my house since she was fourteen," she said. "I taught her to drive a stick shift."

"I know."

"I'm not angry that you're together, Clarissa."

"You're not?"

"I'm angry at that child, and at Deborah, and at myself, a little. Your father knew."

I stared at her.

"Walter knew he looked at you," she said. "He wasn't blind."

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