I shrugged. “If you want a girlfriend, you will be.”
“Oh, I want a girlfriend.” He took the knife out of my hand and laid it on the counter, and my blood rose at the slight growl in his voice. Down, girl. It’s all fake. “Let’s get rid of the carpet we already pulled up, then we’ll get the living room done today too. Just make sure you put avocados on your shopping list.”
* * *
? ? ?
Sure enough, by the time Caitlin finished with rehearsal, Mitch and I had ripped out the carpet in the guest room, as well as the living room and dining room, and he was gone before she came home. There was a look of shock on my daughter’s face when she walked through the front door to see me sweeping the bare concrete living room floor.
“I know,” I said. “I know. It looks terrible right now. I promise there will be a real floor in here soon. Sooner than soon.” Inside I was cringing. We’d come a long way recently, and things had been almost back to normal around here. Was this blatant show of home renovation going to set us back?
“Okay.” To her credit, she swallowed down her shock and her voice was impassive, almost bored sounding. She sniffed the air. “Pulled pork smells good.”
“It does. Dinner will be easy tonight.” I propped the broom against the wall and sank down onto the sofa. I was exhausted, I was sweaty, and I was already starting to get sore. My plans for the rest of the afternoon involved a nice hot bath, some Epsom salts, and a book. And tacos for dinner. Yum.
“How was rehearsal?” That was a safe question to ask.
“Good.” She dropped her backpack by the door, almost directly under the hook it was supposed to hang on, and joined me, flopping down on the other end of the sofa. She echoed my tired stance, our feet propped up on opposite ends of the coffee table. “We didn’t do a whole lot today. Mostly introductory stuff. But I think I have a full group of Lilies.”
“Well, that’s good news.” I swallowed my smile. Caitlin sounded like a battle-weary general instead of a teenager. Very in charge. Simon had certainly put her to work.
My tired brain wandered from Simon to Mitch, and I was glad that he’d already left before Caitlin got home. I didn’t know how I was going to explain this weekend trip with him to her. It was bad enough that an English teacher had married into the family, but going away for the weekend with a gym teacher? Caitlin was going to have half the faculty of Willow Creek High in her life at this point.
Not to mention, I didn’t know how I was going to handle this. I didn’t take weekend trips. Especially sans daughter, and even more especially with a man. I was completely at sea here.
The solution didn’t hit me until I was happily submerged in my bath, bath bomb fizzing all around me and turning my bathwater a neon shade of pink. As soon as I was out of the bath, I sent Emily a text. Going away for the weekend with Mitch. DON’T ASK. Can you watch Caitlin while I’m away?
Her response came almost immediately, while I was shredding the pork for dinner. THE WEEKEND??? WTF?????
I told you not to ask.
Laughing emojis came back in reply. Your place or mine? （Is that what he said???）
Cut it out. But I couldn’t bite back the laugh at her text. Let me see what Caitlin would rather do. I’ll let you know.
That was the question, wasn’t it? I’d sprung a lot of changes on Caitlin lately, and I wasn’t sure how to spring yet one more.
But as the calendar inched closer to the weekend I’d be spending in Virginia with Mitch and the Malone clan, I couldn’t hide from the inevitable any longer. “So what would you think,” I asked one night over dinner, “if Emily came over to stay for a weekend?”
Caitlin shrugged, but her expression was confused. “Sure, but why? Is something wrong?” Her eyes widened. “Did she and Mr. G have a fight?”
“No, no. Nothing like that.” I crunched on a bite of salad. “I have to go out of town next weekend, and I thought she could come stay here with you. You know. Keep an eye on things.”
“Keep an eye on me, you mean.” Caitlin rolled her eyes and tsked at me in disgust. “I’m practically eighteen, you know. I can take care of myself.”
“I know you can.” I hated how defensive I sounded to my own daughter. “This is just—”
“I don’t need a babysitter.” She tossed her fork onto the table and leaned back in her chair, her arms crossed.
“Okay, that’s enough.” No. I was not going to defend myself. I was still her mother. “If you don’t need a babysitter, then don’t act like a baby.”
She huffed. “I’m not acting like—”
“Yes, you are. You’re throwing a tantrum. This isn’t about you being able to take care of yourself. It’s about me being worried about you while I’m gone.” She glared at me, and I glared right back. I hated this. We’d been a team for so long, but it was starting to look like those days were over. I nodded down toward the table. “Now, pick up your fork and finish your salad.”
“I’m not hungry.” Caitlin pushed back from the table. “I have homework to finish anyway.” She took her dishes to the kitchen and then she was gone. I sighed and speared another bite of lettuce. So much for our reconciliation. Another evening of loud silence stretched in front of me like a lonely highway.
* * *
? ? ?
That Thursday night, Caroline brought cupcakes to our neighborhood book club.
“Oh, great,” Marjorie muttered from where she sat next to me on the couch. “She got laid again.”
I snorted into my wine. Marjorie wasn’t wrong. Ever since Caroline’s divorce was finalized a year and a half ago, she’d become . . . promiscuous. Word floated around, on the nights that she didn’t make book club, that her marriage had been pretty dead for the five years previous, and with it her sex life. So now that she was single again she was making up for lost time. And every time she did, she brought cupcakes to book club to celebrate.
Not that I was judging her for it. It meant free cupcakes for me. And I probably would have done the same thing in her shoes. When I’d actually been in her shoes, roughly seventeen years ago, I’d had an infant, which had been a deterrent against getting any further action in my life. So get some, Caroline, was my opinion. Not that anyone ever asked. I was the quiet one in the group, and that was the way I liked it.
After all, I still remembered those early days in Willow Creek, of buying this house and moving in with my young daughter. After some pointed where’s Mr. Parker? kinds of questions, I’d drawn the curtains. Shut myself into my house. Hidden myself and my daughter away to keep us safe from small-town gossip. Sure, I’d been single for a few years at that point, but the shame, the sting of being rejected by the man who’d promised to always love me, was still there, like it was stamped on my forehead for everyone to see. It was easier to assume the worst in people rather than feel like that again. But then Marjorie had extended the olive branch, inviting me to book club and bringing me into the neighborhood fold. It was nice, for the most part. But sometimes I wondered what they said about me the nights I wasn’t there.