Chapter Five
DAVIS
The familiar aroma of tuna casserole and salted brussels sprouts transported me back in time. Only I wasn’t a gangly teenage boy entering my mother’s kitchen. I was a thirty-two-year-old man. And it was my kitchen she was cooking in.
“Davis? Oh, you’re home sooner than I anticipated!” She spun away from the chef-grade stovetop I’d purchased last winter, wiped her fingers on a dish towel, and gripped my forearm to kiss my cheek. “The gals at the clinic said you had an emergency surgery—a dog with a twisted intestine?”
“I did.” I dropped my satchel on the barstool, thankful my commute home was only a few strides on foot and not a drive across town. “He didn’t make it.” It would have taken a miracle for Booker to pull through the anesthesia. He was too far gone by the time Stan Yinger brought him in. But after six years of owning my own practice, I’d learned that some procedures were more about the owner’s peace of mind—that they’d done everything they could for their beloved pet—than about saving the animal.
She clucked her tongue. “That’s a pity.”
To my mother, the death of a nine-year-old boxer was a pity. But to Stan Yinger, losing his most faithful companion of nearly a decade was nothing short of a tragedy.
“I appreciate you cooking dinner. You didn’t have to do that.” I went to the sink and flipped on the faucet, soaping my hands for what was likely the eightieth time since breakfast. “So how was he today?”
The look she gave me said it was the same as yesterday. And the day before that. Finding Brandon with Collin and his aunt last week had pushed our rocky relationship over the cliff.
I stretched my neck side to side and suppressed my irritation. “He didn’t come out of his room?”
“Only to grab a snack or two.” She shrugged. “Hence the casserole.”
And hence my mother’s favorite life-coping mechanism.
Didn’t make the cut for the church choir? Tuna casserole. Came in second at the annual Bake-Off? Tuna casserole. Preteen grandson acting out? Tuna casserole.
At least before my father’s health failed, she’d listened to his request for anything but her signature dish, and she’d had the decency to oblige him. Unfortunately for us, she’d reverted back to her old ways in recent years.
She pressed a hand to the center of my back. “This will pass, Davis. All boys his age go through a rough patch. Doesn’t mean he’s not a good kid.”
I’d be inclined to agree with her if Brandon’s “rough patch” hadn’t felt like an eternity already. His detention for vandalism was only one of several offenses my mother knew nothing about. For good reason. I loved the woman dearly, but the concept of a personal life wasn’t one she understood. Information of any kind was to be shared, processed, and regurgitated within her social network of friends. And I was not the kind of man who wanted his son raised by a village.
“I’ll figure something else out for him soon. I know you have other things to do with your time besides babysit.” Guilt pressed against my conscience as I thought of all she was giving up to spend her days keeping an eye on him.
She shook her head. “Nonsense. It’s fine. He can come with me on some odd jobs, and I can take him to the garden club if it comes to that, although I don’t understand why he doesn’t just go to the clinic with you like he’s always done. He adores animals.”
It’s not the animals he’s rejecting. “We’ll work it out. Don’t worry. I just need a few more days.”
She reached for her carry-on-size purse at the edge of the counter. “You know I’m here whenever you need me. I’m proud of you, sweetheart. Always have been, always will be.” And then her eyes misted. “Stephanie would be proud of you, too—of how you’ve carried on, built a thriving practice, and loved her child despite her absence.” She blinked rapidly to fan away her tears. “There’s somebody out there for you, Son. I can sense it. I’ve been praying for her—and so have the ladies in my Bible study group ever since . . . well, ever since Willa, you know.”
Every cell in my body flinched at her statement. “There are far more pressing needs in our world than my dating life.”
“Not to this mother.” She smiled and patted my cheek. “Now, about that casserole. Make sure you check it in six or seven minutes, tops. Your oven is fancier than mine, so it cooks hotter.”
“Thank you.” I walked her to the door. “Tell John I’ll take him up on a round of golf soon.”
“Will do.” She kissed me again on the cheek and then barked out a sudden laugh. “Oh—speaking of John, do you remember that antique potter’s wheel in front of Valerie’s gift shop down on Sixth Street? It’s sat on the sidewalk for ages.”
I stared at her blankly.
“You know the one, Davis. She always decorates it so cute with those huge white-and-yellow fake daisies? Anyway”—she waved her hand through the air—“the thing’s sat there since before your father passed away. And I used to beg him to buy it for me every single time we drove by it, and—”
“What on earth would you want with an old potter’s wheel, Mother?”
“It’s not for me to use, silly. It would be for my garden—a creative display piece. You know, something to plant flowers in and around. A conversation starter. Diane Gibbons has two nineteen-fifties tricycles in front of her water feature, and just last week I repurposed an old farmhouse-style sink in a client’s garden.”
A potter’s wheel? Antique tricycles? A sink? I hadn’t the foggiest idea what she was talking about. “And what does this have to do with John again?”
“I’ll get to that.” I opened my front door, and she stepped onto the porch, not pausing for breath. “So anyway, Valerie called and told me someone actually bought that crusty old potter’s wheel this afternoon! I couldn’t believe it! Apparently, there’s this young artsy gal staying on the south end of town. Loading the thing was quite the ordeal, too. Took three men. Val said traffic all but stopped as they worked to secure it into her trunk. Can’t you just imagine if that had been your father and me out there like that? I’m pretty sure he would have left me and my purchase on the sidewalk to hitch a ride home.”
A young artsy gal staying on the south side of town? The image of a wild-haired woman with a half-painted face and a lack of personal boundaries formed in my mind. What were the chances Collin’s aunt was behind that ridiculous purchase? Something told me they were high.
I focused again on my chuckling mother. “Dad always did have a fairly low tolerance for drama.”
She eyed me before heading to her car. “Like father like son, I’m afraid. Anyway, when I called John to share my good laugh with him, his voice went all serious before he said, ‘You should have told me you wanted that, Marti. I would have bought it for you ages ago.’ I told him that wasn’t the point of my story—that I just thought it would have been a funny scene to witness in our little town. He’s silly.”
At her attempt to appear coy, a smile inched across my mouth. “John’s a good man, Mom.”
As far as I was concerned, John Draper was single-handedly responsible for replacing the spark in my mother’s eyes. And while she pretended to see him as only my late father’s best friend and old golfing buddy, she failed to convert anybody else to her delusions. For now, he was her road trip companion and her routine dinner guest. But I had no doubt she loved him.
“Your father was a good man, too.”
I nodded. “No argument there.”
Who would have thought that my sixty-year-old mother would be navigating the dating maze better than her son?
“And so are you.”
If only I were half the dad my father had been to me.
I waved goodbye and went back inside to attend to the beeping of the oven timer. I pulled out the steaming casserole and tossed the oven mitts onto the counter. Brandon still hadn’t emerged from his bat cave. I made my way to his door and knocked twice.
“Yeah?”
“Dinnertime.”
Silence.
“Brandon, come out and eat dinner with me. It’s not an option.”
Options were dead as far as I was concerned. He’d killed that parenting plan the second he forged my name and lied about his whereabouts for nearly three weeks.
Less than a minute later, he joined me at the dinner table, his too-long hair swooped to one side of his forehead, covering his left eye almost completely. I dished up my plate and reached for his, piling it high with tuna casserole and brussels sprouts. He murmured a thank-you under his breath when I handed it back to him.
And then it began: the bitter silence that seasoned our every meal together. Our every moment together.
Gone were the dinners where I’d begged him to take a breath between run-on sentences or a bite between imaginary stories. I could hardly remember the animated kid who used to tuck a flyswatter into his pants pocket and call it his sword. The little boy who shadowed my every movement and cried when he couldn’t follow me into the exam room at the clinic was no more. Where had he gone? And more importantly, how could I get him back?
I set my fork down and cleared my throat, preparing to ask that very question, when Brandon opened his mouth.
“Oma called me today.”
My eyes snapped to his. “Why?” But I knew perfectly well why she’d called him. I just didn’t want to believe she’d go behind my back. Again.
“To ask me about travel dates.” A flat answer. “They want me to come out early this summer—be there for the Fourth of July. She said she e-mailed you about it.”
My taste buds soured and I reached for my water glass. All I needed was for Vivian and Charles Lockwood to get involved in our recent family dynamics. No, not this summer. Not with Brandon and me so disjointed. “You won’t be going this summer.”
“What?” His eyes flashed fire. “But you can’t do that. You made a promise to them—and to me. I get three weeks in California every summer. It’s what Mom wanted!”
“Don’t.” Every deep-breathing exercise in the world couldn’t keep my temper at bay. “Don’t you dare use your mother’s memory to manipulate me. I know what she wanted, and this”—I gestured between us—“isn’t it.”
The audacity on his face was the first real emotion I’d seen since the day I found him with Collin’s crazy aunt. “So what, then? You’re just going to trap me inside this house all summer long with Grandma like a prisoner?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
Staring me down, he shook his head over and over as if trying to shake the words loose. Good. I was ready to hear them. I’d been ready to hear them for months now. We couldn’t deal with the future until we addressed the present.
“Say it,” I said, balling my napkin into my fist. “Tell me why you’re so angry all the time. Tell me why you’ve been acting like a kid I don’t even know. Tell me how to fix things between us so we can move on. Just . . . tell me something!” I tossed the compressed napkin onto the table, knocking the saltshaker on its side.
But Brandon’s protective walls had returned, his expression a metal gate pulled closed. He pushed his tuna casserole aside and slipped back into himself.
And once again, silence became our main course.
Every day that passed, every word left unsaid, was another reminder that I was losing my son.
And I had no idea how to make it stop.