“You can change Zach in the guest room,” Mom said, dropping the diaper bag at Georgia’s feet.
Georgia’s eyes went wide.
Vero backed away, hands raised. “Don’t look at me. It’s my day off.” She retreated to the living room, pressing a kiss to my father’s cheek and plopping down beside him on the couch.
Georgia sniffed, her pursed lips making Zach giggle. “Take him, Finn. I’m not qualified to handle this one.” She held him out to me. I was certain she’d be more comfortable dismantling a bomb.
I plucked her beer from her other hand instead, sliding the straps of the diaper bag over it until the bag dangled from her arm like a jacket on a coatrack. “Think of it as a tactical bag,” I said with a reassuring pat.
Georgia eyed the diaper bag, my name a soft plea on her lips as I took a long swig of her beer and turned for the kitchen, following the buttery-sweet smell of candied sweet potatoes and stuffing. Sinking into a chair at the kitchen table, I closed my eyes and sipped, grateful for a few moments of peace.
Something heavy thunked down on the table in front of me. I opened one eye. The bowl of green beans was piled high, a tangle of pods and stems. “Work on these while I baste,” my mother said, drawing on her kitchen mitts. I set down my beer with a sigh as she hauled a steaming turkey from the oven.
“How’s your book coming?”
“Great,” I lied.
My mother looked at me askance as her baster sucked juices from the bottom of the pan. “Have they paid you yet?”
“Only half. I get the rest when I finish.” If I finished.
“Put that half in savings. Just in case.”
“In case of what?”
“In case you need it for an attorney.” She grunted as she hefted the turkey back into the oven. I knew better than to offer to help her. Mom liked to handle some things herself. Holiday dinners—cooking and feeding her family—was a job we would only pry from her cold dead fingers. The sole reason she was letting me prep the beans was because that was a job I couldn’t screw up. “Is Steven’s lawyer still pestering you?”
I snapped the head off a pod. “It’s fine, Ma. I can handle it.”
“I thought Steven had agreed to weekly visitation.”
“He wants the kids every Friday afternoon through Monday morning now that he has a house.”
My mother made a disgusted noise, dropping a cutting board on the table and slamming down a knife. Joint custody wasn’t as bad as the full custody he’d been fighting for when he and Theresa had been ready to tie the knot. But it was still three nights away from home in another county, instead of a few blocks down the street. “He’s a monster,” she said, chopping parsley with a vengeance.
“He’s not a monster. He’s just angry.” Angry, because his relationship with Theresa hadn’t worked out. Because his business was struggling after five bodies had been exhumed from his farm. Because I was finally making enough money to support myself and the kids without him.
“Because of this young man you’re seeing?”
And maybe that.
The fact that I was seeing someone had been a nagging thorn in Steven’s side. He liked to pluck it out and turn it on me, calling Guy every week with some new plan to slowly whittle away at my custody.
My mother raised an eyebrow. “Georgia says this man you’re seeing works part time. That he’s still in school.”
“Graduate school.”
“He’s too young for you. You should be dating someone closer to your own age. Someone stable who can provide for you and the children.”
“I can provide for me and the children.”
“If you had a husband, Steven wouldn’t be threatening to take the kids. He wouldn’t have a leg to stand on.”
I pushed away the bowl of murdered beans. “Why are you and Dad always nagging me to find a husband? You never nag Georgia about finding a wife.”
“Georgia has health insurance and retirement benefits.”
I heaved a sigh and dropped my head in my hand. I had no answer for that.
“What about that nice man who works with your sister?” My mother stirred the air with her ladle, conjuring his name. “The tall one with dark hair whose partner had cancer. I met him once, years ago, when he and Georgia graduated from the Academy together. He’s very handsome,” she said, pitching her voice low as if this was some scandalous announcement. “And he’s Catholic.”
I lifted the beer to my lips to hide my blush. Detective Nicholas Anthony was, indeed, very handsome. He was also a helluva kisser. But my mother didn’t need any more fodder for her marriage fantasies. It’d been a month since Nick had shown up on my front porch with a bottle of champagne and a chagrined apology for suspecting the worst of me, but my argument with him still needled me. I hated that even though my motives had been innocent, to some degree, Nick had been right. I’d lied to him to keep myself out of trouble, and I hadn’t gotten around to forgiving myself for that.