Chapter 6
Joshua
This should’ve made me happy. That was what it was supposed to be like for other people when they visited their parents. Normal, happy families didn’t dread seeing each other.
I didn’t technically dread seeing my mother but my father, damn, that was another story entirely. That was straight out of hell, fear and shame, and most of it was probably self-inflicted.
“They’re your parents,” I muttered, and turned onto the long dirt road that led up to the farmhouse I’d bought them two years ago, when I’d first sold my idea. “They’re your parents.” Repeating it didn’t help.
I didn’t want to see my dad’s disappointment in me. He still thought I could be more than what I was. He couldn’t believe I’d given up the chance to live the high life and make something real of myself out in New York.
He was the opposite to all those country parents who just wanted their kids to stay on the farm and carry on the work of their friggin’ ancestors.
I slowed my breathing, calmed myself, then parked the truck in front of their wooden stairs. The front door was ajar, and the scent of baking blueberry pie drifted out from within and through my open window.
Mom was at it again, making her favorites and force feeding them to all and sundry. Though, it couldn’t be called force when the pies were so damn delicious no one could get enough of them.
I got out of the truck and tried leaving my apprehension behind. Didn’t work. Grown ass thirty-year-old man afraid of his parents. “Mom?” I yelled out.
“In the kitchen, honey,” she called back.
I shrugged, tucked the keys in my pocket, then jogged up the stairs and down the hall. The place my parents had chosen was far smaller than my ‘hotel’ as Eve had called it. Modest, homely, and probably all I needed.
I’d gone out on a limb building my place on the land my father had once owned.
“Joshua?”
I flinched – I’d hovered just outside the door for a good minute – then entered the kitchen. “Hey,” I said, and swept over to my mom’s side. I drew her into a hug and kissed the top of her gray-haired head.
She was elegant even in an apron decorated with smiling muffins and donuts. “There you are, boy,” she said, and patted my back. “I thought you’d fallen through the looking glass.”
“I saw Alice on the other side,” I said. “She told me you forgot to add lemon juice to your blueberry mix.”
“She’s a dirty little liar,” Mom replied, then bent and opened the oven door. “Ah, it’s almost done.”
“And what’s this one for?” I asked, gesturing to the pie already cooling on the window sill. The scent of it was stronger in here and absolutely irresistible.
“For you, of course. You usually visit on a Monday, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Then you know that pie is for you,” Mom replied. “Give me a minute and I’ll whip up some cream, then make us a pot of coffee.”
“I’ll handle the coffee.” I walked to the machine and set about making it, back of my neck prickling already. If we had coffee and blueberry pie, Dad would be in on it, too. No way would my mother allow us to feast without him. Meal time was family time in the Jackson house.
Mom hummed under her breath and busied herself with the oven. A shrill alarm went off, and she muttered something, then yanked the door open again and removed the pie.
“How have you been?” I asked. We did Monday night visits and frequent phone calls but if Mom ever had something to complain about, she kept it to herself. She’d always been a trooper.
“Same old, same old, dear. I don’t want for anything, thanks to you.”
“Well, if you need anything, remember to let me know. Anything at all,” I said. It was overcompensation but I didn’t care how blatantly it came across. I couldn’t help worrying about my parents, even though they gave me fucking hives from the sheer pressure of it all.
Neither of them were billionaires but they were perfect. They’d lived perfectly average lives and been popular with everyone in Hope Creek. Dad had been a respected farmer. All my life, I’d dreamed of being like them. Of impressing them with my own prowess as a farmer and husband.
Except neither of those things had come to pass, and the harder I tried, the less impressed my father seemed. My mother, well, she put a different type of pressure on me.
“So?” she asked, right on cue.
“Mom,” I said because I didn’t have to ask what she meant. We’d had this conversation countless times already, ever since I’d returned to Hope Creek. “Please.”
Madge Jackson let out an exaggerated sigh and clinked three plates onto the table, along with three little forks. “I know I keep asking, honey, but it’s not like you’re getting any younger. You’re thirty already. Trust me, I know what it’s like to have a baby at your age, and it’s not easy. I was thirty-two when I gave birth to you, and your father was nearly forty. Far too old.”
“I know,” I said. The words were almost exactly the same each time she delivered this speech.
“And there’s no end to the eligible women who’d love to go out on a date with you in this town. I know Hope Creek isn’t exactly brimming with supermodels but you can’t have unreasonable standards.”
“I know.”
“I heard that Nancy’s daughter is interested in you. And Mrs. Beaumont’s as well. You know how happy it would make her if you went out on a date with her granddaughter.”
“I know.” Acknowledgement always smoothed this process.
Mom let out another beleaguered sigh. “I just don’t want you to regret not settling down. And I’d love to have a few grandkids at the table for Christmas.”
“Mom, it’s July! Do you really expect me to have met and impregnated a –”
“Impregnated! There’s no need to be blunt.”
“I’m serious. I’d have had to have met her months ago for that to work out and… what? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Oh, it’s just – nothing.”
“Mom?”
“Well, I got a call from Grace this morning.”
Oh, god, help me. Grace was another town gossip.
“And she mentioned that you had a lovely lady over at your mansion last night. I thought perhaps she was your girlfriend and you’d hidden it from us because you were worried we’d –”
“Make us both interminably uncomfortable?”
Mom’s mouth flapped open and closed.
“Firstly, my ranch house is not a mansion –”
“Semantics.”
“And secondly, Eve isn’t my girlfriend. She just stayed over because it was late and she drove me to Heather’s Forge because my car broke down.”
“You broke down?” My father’s voice rang from the kitchen doorway and I sucked in a breath.
Fuck it. Why did he make me so damn nervous? He was my father, for god’s sake.
I turned and gave him a smile, stuck out my hand. We hadn’t hugged in my memory. “Afternoon, Dad.”
“Son,” he said, and shook once, firm and businesslike as usual. He was the older, shorter version of me, with silver hair and his collar undone. Jeans as usual, always practical, though he hadn’t gone out on the farm to reap or sow in years.
Dad entered the kitchen and took his place at the head of the table, dragged an empty plate and fork toward himself. Mom busied herself with the mugs and now full coffee pot.
“You said you broke down?”
“Not technically broke down. I ran out of gas and my phone went dead,” I said. “I was in a rush to get George his new goat.”
“And you didn’t think to gas up the Ford?” Dad gave a tiny shake of the head, another of his not-so-subtle signs of disappointment in his son.
“I didn’t think.” Another crime punishable by frown. Fuck’s sake, I was an adult. This shouldn’t get to me. “How have you been?”
“We’re fine,” Howie Jackson replied, stiffly. Never one to show much emotions or let on that there may or may not be hard times ahead.
“I was just asking Joshy about his new girlfriend. He says her name is Eve,” Mom said, carrying over the three mugs on a tray, along with sugar and cream. She put it down and lavished me with a smile. “I hear she’s pretty.”
“She’s not my girlfriend,” I said. “I don’t have a girlfriend. She just helped me out of a sticky situation yesterday when I ran out of gas.”
“Ran out of gas.” Dad shook his head again.
“Anyway, she’s a nice woman but she’s –” What? What could I say? That she was gorgeous and I couldn’t get her off my mind but she probably wouldn’t want to see me again? I didn’t even know why that was.
And now, Cassidy wanted me to ask her out and it made things seem so… pressurized all over again. I couldn’t catch a break or fantasize about the possibilities in peace without someone putting pressure on the situation.
“– getting any younger.”
I’d missed most of Mom’s lecture about kids and age and a ticking male clock.
“Unless you plan on marrying a woman much younger than you,” she said, and sniffed to show what she thought of that.
“Define much younger.”
“Ten years,” Mom said.
“You’re one to talk. Dad’s seven years older than you,” I replied.
“Perfectly acceptable. Just not ten years.” Mom carried the pie to the table and set it down on one of those fluffy pot holder things. “Here, sit down and have some pie, darling. Shoot, I forgot to whip up the cream.”
“Let me do it,” I said, and moved to the electric whisk that sat on the counter. I’d take any excuse to avoid the prying questions and to allow me a few seconds to think about Eve, and the way she moved, her smile, her tiny waist.