“Yeah, honey?” Single moms were good at multitasking, so I could both answer my daughter and refresh my makeup at the same time. I’d left work an hour early, but Friday afternoon traffic had been a bitch, so I didn’t have a lot of time to get changed and ready for this reception thing. The details of this evening were sketchy, but maybe that was my fault for not volunteering for a single school event over the years. I was able to glean from Emily that it was set up as a faculty-parent mixer; a way for the parents to socialize with the teachers who’d guided their children through the past four years of high school, getting them prepared for the future. Some crap like that. Most parents had formed relationships with these teachers, I supposed, through volunteering, Friday night football games, and multiple parent-teacher conferences. As for me, well, Emily was going to be there, since she was a teacher’s wife. And Simon would be there, as said teacher. And Mitch, probably—we hadn’t talked since he’d dropped me off on Sunday, but it seemed like something he’d attend. So there. I would know three whole people.
God, I should have been more involved when my kid was growing up.
Caitlin appeared in my bedroom and perched on the end of my bed where she could see me at the bathroom mirror. “I need to . . . um.” She threw her gaze to her feet, tapping the toe of one shoe against the floor. “I need to talk to you about something.”
I blotted my lipstick and considered my reflection one more time before declaring it good enough. “Sure, but can we talk in the car? I’m running a little late.” I slipped past her into the bedroom, grabbing my dress from its hanger on the back of the closet door.
“Yeah.” She watched me with large eyes, reminding me of a guilty puppy, and a tingle of dread crept across my skin.
“Everything okay?” I narrowed my eyes as I stepped into the dress. “Are you worried that one of your teachers might tell me something? If you’re not graduating tomorrow, you better tell me now.” I was joking, but was I really? Something was up.
“Oh, God, Mom! No! It’s not that. It’s . . .” But she bit at the inside of her cheek again, screwing her face up in a partial scowl. “No, you’re right. We can talk in the car.”
She fled the room as I settled the dress into place and stepped into my shoes. A frown creased my forehead as I tucked my lipstick into my bag and grabbed my keys. Caitlin should be in a much better mood. She was finished with high school; only the reception tonight and the graduation ceremony tomorrow to go. She had the Ren Faire to look forward to over the summer and college in the fall. Everything was going her way. What was the problem?
She was silent in the car, and about halfway to the community center on the other side of town, I got impatient. “Okay, out with it. What’s up?”
“It’s . . .” She took a deep breath and pressed a hand to her chest. “Okay, I should have told you before now, and I’m really sorry I didn’t. But I didn’t know what to say, or how to tell you that—”
“Caitlin.” My voice carried a hint of warning. Stalling time was over.
“Okay.” Another deep breath. “So. Um. I may have invited . . . um . . . my father to graduation.”
I gripped the steering wheel as my vision went white around the edges. I concentrated on taking a slow breath. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. “Okay.” I’d known this was going to be a possibility, ever since he’d sent Caitlin that card. Ever since she’d said she might contact him. “Okay,” I said again. “Did he say if he was going to come?”
“I think so?” Her voice went high-pitched, uncertain. “I mean, he emailed back and said he was looking forward to it, so I guess he is.”
“That’s fine.” I was pleasantly surprised at how even my voice was. I sounded like I wasn’t thrown for a loop at all. Go, me. “I mean, I wish you’d given me a little more notice than the night before, but that’s—”
“Oh. No. I mean I invited him to the thing tonight too.”
“You what?” My grip on the steering wheel tightened, and I was surprised it didn’t snap in half. I wanted to turn and glare at my daughter, but I couldn’t look at her right now. I was driving. And I was about to have a panic attack.
“Look, I was mad at you, okay?” Caitlin’s voice was shrill now, and I could hear tears in her voice. “You went off for the weekend without telling me where you were going, you stuck me with Emily like I was some kind of baby that needed supervision. And he said in his card that he was proud of me, and I thought . . .”
She kept talking, but I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of the blood pounding in my temples. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to slam on the brakes. I wanted to make a quick U-turn and drive home. Or bypass home completely, drive past the city limits, and keep driving until I was in another state. Another time zone. I hadn’t been in a room with Robert Daugherty in almost two decades, and I wasn’t ready for that to change.
But this wasn’t about me, was it? This was about Caitlin. As her words sank in, I realized I’d upset my daughter so much that she’d turned to a man she’d never met because he offered her a single bread crumb of support. She’d thought she couldn’t count on me. There were a lot of things I could say at this moment, but they were all terrible. Vindictive. And that wasn’t something I wanted to pile on Caitlin’s head. She’d set all this in motion, but none of it was her fault. It was mine.
So I didn’t say anything. I went back to that breathing thing: in through the nose, out through the mouth. I did that until we were safely parked at the community center and I’d killed the engine.
“I’m sorry, Mom.” Caitlin sounded miserable. “Please. I’m sorry. I didn’t think you were going to come tonight. You never come to school stuff. So I didn’t think it would be a big deal. You’d said before that it would be okay if I contacted him.”
“You’re right. I did.” I nodded and stared straight ahead. I needed to get a grip. I needed to be Mom of Happy High School Graduate tonight, not Abandoned Ex-Wife. So I pushed down everything I was feeling and focused on Caitlin. My default setting since the day she was born. “Hey.” I reached across the console and grasped her wrist. Her skin was cold, and mine probably was too. We were both beyond anxious. “It’s okay.” Her eyes when they met mine were frantic, so I did my best to telegraph calm. “I’m not mad at you. And it’s fine that you contacted him. I’m glad you did, and I’m glad he’s coming.” Okay, that was a lie, but it wouldn’t be the first one I’d told my daughter. “Where did he say he was meeting you?”
She shrugged, looking toward the entrance of the building. “He didn’t say?”
My heart sank. I didn’t want to see him, but if he stood her up after all this . . . “Come on. Let’s go inside and see if we can find him.” Would I recognize him after all this time? Would he recognize me?
“No.” She squared her shoulders, and when she turned to me she looked like that young woman again. Not a frightened child. “No, I’ll go. I can do this.”