“Mom, can we talk?”
Clare Craig glanced up from her desk to find her seventeen-year-old son standing in the doorway of the family room. They’d spent the morning taking down the Christmas decorations, as they always did on January sixth—Epiphany, Twelfth Night—and getting Mick ready to return to college. How like Michael he looked, she thought with a twinge of sorrow. Michael twenty-five years ago, athletic, handsome, fit. Her heart cramped at the memory.
“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Alex stepped inside, dressed in his soccer uniform. The holiday break was already over; school had begun earlier in the week. Mick had left that morning for college in San Francisco.
Clare capped the end of her fountain pen and set aside the checkbook and bills in order to give her younger son her full attention. “What can I do for you?”
Alex avoided her gaze. “We haven’t been talking as much as we used to,” he mumbled, walking slowly toward her desk.
“I’ve been busy.” The Christmas tree had only come down that morning, but she realized he wasn’t referring to the last few days; he meant over the past year.
“I know,” he said with a shrug, his eyes darting around the room. “It’s just that…”
“Is there something you wanted to tell me?”
He raised his head and their eyes briefly met. Reading her younger son had never been a problem for Clare.
“How about if we talk in the kitchen?” she suggested. “You thirsty?”
The hopeful look on his face convinced her to abandon paying the bills. She’d get back to all that later.
“Sure.” He led the way through the large family room and into the kitchen.
Clare loved her expansive kitchen with its double ovens and large butcher-block island. Shining copper pots and kettles dangled from the rack above, the California sunlight reflected in their gleam. Clare had designed the kitchen herself and spent countless hours reviewing every detail, every drawer placement, every cupboard. She’d taken pride in her home, in her skill as a cook and homemaker.
These days it was unusual for her to prepare a meal. Alex had a part-time job at a computer store, and if he wasn’t at school or work, he was with his friends or on the soccer field. Cooking for one person hardly seemed worth the effort, and more and more often she ordered out. Or didn’t bother at all.
“I’ll get us a Coke,” Alex said, already reaching for the refrigerator handle. Clare automatically took two glasses from the cupboard.
Alex placed the cans on the round oak table. Many a night, unable to sleep, the two of them had sat here while Clare sobbed in pain and frustration. Alex had wept, too. It hadn’t been easy for a teenage boy to expose his emotions like that. If Clare didn’t already hate Michael for what he’d done to her self-esteem, then she’d hate him for the pain he’d brought into their children’s lives.
“Mick and I had a long talk last night.”
Clare had surmised as much. She’d heard them in Alex’s bedroom sometime after midnight, deep in conversation. Their raised voices were followed by heated whispers. Whatever they were discussing was between them and she was determined to keep out of it. They needed to settle their own differences.
“He’s upset with me.”
“Mick is? What for?”
Alex shrugged. He seemed to do that a lot these days.
“Brother stuff?” It was what he generally said when he didn’t want to give her a full explanation.
“Something like that.” He waited a moment before pulling back the tab on his soda can and taking a long swallow, ignoring the glass she’d set in front of him.
“Does this have to do with Kellie?” Alex and the girl across the street had been dating for a couple of months. Mick had dated her last summer and Clare wondered if the neighbor girl was causing a problem between her sons.
“Ah, Mom, we’re just friends.”
“If you and your brother had a falling-out, why don’t you just tell me instead of expecting me to guess?”
He lowered his eyes. “Because I’m afraid you’re going to react the same way Mick did.”
“Oh? And how’s that?”
Alex took another drink of his Coke. Clare recognized a delaying tactic when she saw one. “Alex?”
“All right,” he said brusquely and sat up, his shoulders squared. “I’ve been talking to Dad.”
Clare swallowed hard, but a small shocked sound still managed to escape. She felt as though she’d taken a punch to the solar plexus.
“Are you mad?” Alex asked, watching her anxiously.
“It shouldn’t matter what I think.”
“But it does! I don’t want you to feel like I’ve betrayed you, too.”
“I…”
“That’s what Mick said I was doing. First Dad and now me. Mom, I swear to you, it isn’t like that.”
“Michael is your father,” she said, her mind whirling as she struggled with her conflicting emotions. Alex would never intentionally do anything to hurt her. As much as possible, Clare had tried not to entangle her sons in this divorce. When Michael moved out of the family home and in with his underage sweetheart, the two boys had rallied around her as if they could protect her from further pain. It didn’t work, but she’d cherished them for their show of sympathy and support.
“He called…Dad did.”
“When?” Now she was the one avoiding eye contact. She distracted herself by opening the can of Coke and pouring it carefully into her glass.
“Last week at Softline.”
“He phoned you at work?” She shouldn’t have been surprised; Michael was too much of a coward to risk having her answer the phone here at the house. Naturally he’d taken the low road.
“He invited me to dinner.”
“And you’re going?”
Clare felt her son’s scrutiny. “I don’t know yet. Mick doesn’t think I should.”
“But you want to, right?”
Alex stood and paced the area in front of the table. “That’s the crazy part, Mom. I do and I don’t. I haven’t talked to Dad in over a year—well, other than to say I wasn’t going to talk to him.”
“He is your father,” Clare said, to remind herself as much as her son.
“That’s what Kellie said.”
Sure Kellie said that, Clare mused darkly. She hadn’t seen her mother betrayed and then dumped like last week’s garbage. Kellie had two loving parents. She couldn’t even imagine what divorce did to a person’s soul or how it tore a family apart.
“I told Mick and I’m telling you. If my seeing Dad hurts you, then I won’t do it.”
Clare forced a smile but wasn’t sure what to say.
“Kellie thinks I should be talking to Dad,” he said, studying her closely, as though the neighbor girl’s opinion would influence her. Clare wasn’t particularly interested in what Kellie thought, but she knew how difficult the last two years had been for Alex, knew how badly he missed Michael.
“Kellie’s right,” she said briskly.