Mom! Don't Pull The Curtain! novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Thirty-One Cucumbers

Silent ride home, Carol's count, her secret man, and Justin at the Saturday stand getting hosed down.

Mom drove home forty minutes without saying a word.

Her phone buzzed in the cup holder the whole way, and she let it.

The phone buzzed half a dozen times before the exit.

Every time the screen lit up I saw the small red heart.

In the kitchen she dropped her purse on the table and opened the fridge.

She took out the crate of cucumbers, set it on the counter, and began to count them out loud.

"Thirty-one," she said.

"Mom."

"Thirty-one cucumbers have gone missing from this house since the first of September."

"Mom, please."

"I thought it was the raccoons." She slammed the crate down. "I bought a trap for the raccoons, Susanna. Twenty-four dollars."

I put my face in my hands.

"Sit down," she said.

I sat.

She sat across from me and folded her hands on the table, and we looked at each other for a while.

"I'm going to say this once," she said. "I saw what I saw, and I'm not going to talk about it, and neither are you."

"Okay."

"You are twenty-six years old. I can't tell you who to take to bed."

"Okay."

"But he is a doctor, and you were his patient, and that is a bad man's trick, and I hit him because of it."

"He didn't trick me, Mom."

"Susanna."

"I wanted him. I started it. He said he'd take it out and I pushed back onto his hand."

Mom closed her eyes.

"I said I wasn't going to talk about it," she said.

"You asked."

"I did not ask."

"You were about to."

She opened her eyes and, for the first time that day, nearly smiled.

Then it went out of her face.

"And now I have to tell Stanley that I slapped his son."

"Stanley," I said. "Tell me about Stanley."

She picked at the edge of the table.

"He's fifty-eight. He retired from coaching, and he runs the hardware store on Main. He's a widower."

"How long?"

"Five months."

"Five months?" I said. "Mom, you told me you were at book club on Thursdays."

"I am at book club on Thursdays. I am at Stanley's reading about the book."

"You lied to me for five months!"

"You've been feeding my cucumbers to yourself for six weeks."

I opened my mouth, and there was nothing to put in it.

"We're even," she said.

"We are not even!"

"We are a little even."

Her phone buzzed again, and she turned it face down.

"I didn't know how to tell you," she said, quieter. "Your father has been gone four years. You've been in that bedroom since June. I didn't want you to think I'd stopped missing him."

I got up and went around the table and held her.

She let me, stiffly, then not stiffly.

"I'm going to marry him, Sue," she said into my sweater. "I think he's going to ask."

"Okay," I said. "Okay, Mom."

On Saturday we set up the stand at the market the way we always did.

She had put the crate of long cucumbers at the front, and a hand-lettered sign: Fresh Today, Lock Your Doors.

I told her it was a bad joke.

She told me not to tell her how to run her stand.

At ten o'clock, with a line of eight people waiting on pickles, I looked up and saw him.

Dr. Justin Hostetler stood at the end of the row in a plain gray shirt, holding a small paper bag.

His hair was combed this time.

He walked straight to our table, and the people in line moved aside to let him through.

My stomach dropped through the floor.

"Mrs. Marlin," he said. "I came to apologize."

Mom put down the jar she was holding.

"I'd like to apologize to you both," he said. "I should have stopped it."

He looked at me.

"Not because you didn't want it," he said. "Because I should have stopped it."

Eight people in line stopped talking.

Mom walked around the table very slowly.

"Stopped what, exactly?" said the woman at the front. She was holding a jar of dills.

"Nothing," I said. "Mom, don't."

Mom took the garden hose from its hook by the table.

She uncoiled it with one steady pull.

"Mrs. Marlin," Justin said.

"Carol," she said, and turned the nozzle on him.

← Chapter 2 · All chapters · Chapter 4 →

Want to keep talking to characters like these? Chat with AI romance characters: AI Boyfriend · AI Girlfriend · Dark Romance · Fantasy Romance · BL (Boys’ Love) · Billionaire Boyfriend · Mafia Boyfriend · Possessive Boyfriend · Hockey Boyfriend · Older Boyfriend · K-Drama Boyfriend · Anime Boyfriend · Vampire Boyfriend · Werewolf Boyfriend · Demon Boyfriend · Fae Romance · GL (Girls’ Love) · Anime Girlfriend · Goth & Alt Girlfriend · Gamer Girlfriend · Tsundere Girlfriend · Fantasy Girlfriend