It was a moment before Jake could move, frozen by a blast of cold confusion. He finally decided he should have his freaking head examined for taking her out there in the first place.
His mood turned foul on the way over to Telephone Road, and the Manning family was determined to whip it into a hurricane. When he arrived, Cole was slumped on a sofa in the living room, staring at the TV.
“What’s up?” Jake asked.
“Nothing,” Cole responded without looking at him.
“What are you watching?”
“Can’t you see? It’s baseball.”
“I mean, who’s playing?” Jake tried again.
“Two teams,” Cole said, the disdain dripping in his voice.
“Don’t be a smart-ass.”
“I’m bored!” he cried. “This place sucks! There’s nothing to do.”
Jake’s patience was wearing thin. “How about homework?”
Cole suddenly moved for the remote, clicked the game off, and stalked upstairs without so much as a glance at Jake. Man, the kid had a lot of animosity.
“Thought you’d be here for supper,” Jake’s mom called from the kitchen.
“Sorry, Mom,” he said, walking into the kitchen. “I ended up going out of town today.”
Mom looked up from the magazine she was flipping through and exhaled a cloud of smoke at him. “You had a job?”
“No. Just took a ride.”
With a snort of disapproval, Mom ground out her smoke, stood up, and went to the fridge. “I got some leftover tuna casserole. I’ll fix you a plate.”
It was pointless to decline, he knew, so Jake sat down at the old Formica kitchen table, looked around at the yellow painted cabinets and the faded pineapple wallpaper. “Why don’t you let me redo this kitchen, Mom?”
“You got your hands full as it is. I knew you wouldn’t have enough time for Cole, and I guess I was right.”
“What, I’m not supposed to have time to myself?”
“Not when you got responsibility for a kid. I never had any time to myself.”
“I know, Mom. You never did anything but sacrifice,” he groused, not wanting to hear the broken record tonight.
But Mom gave him a pointed, you-know-better look over her shoulder as she fixed his plate. “That’s right. I did nothing but sacrifice for you so you could play baseball. Lord knows your dad wasn’t going to give you that.”
True. But then again, Dad was an asshole.
“That girlfriend of yours called here again today looking for you. At first I thought you’d gone off with her,” she said as she put his plate in the microwave. “Don’t know why you got any interest in her anyway.”
And now they would move right into a critique of his love life. “She’s nice. But it was an accident that she found your number at all.”
“Some accident,” Mom muttered.
“Got any beer?” he sighed, and heaved himself up, went to the fridge to have a look for himself. He pulled out a can of generic beer, went back to the table and popped it open.
“Ever since you left here, you been hooking up with gals who ain’t got enough sense to come out of the rain,” Mom continued, oblivious to his impatience.
“Jesus, Mom, why do you have to do this?” he said, shoving a hand through his hair. “Do you have to point out everything you think I’m doing wrong? Give me a little credit—at least I’m here! At least I’m not dead or in prison!”
Mom removed his plate from the microwave and put it in front of him. “I’m not complaining about you, Jacob,” she said. “Maybe I don’t got all the right words to say it, but I’m trying to get across that you hook yourself up with these gals that you don’t care nothing about. Now you got your nephew and he needs you, and he needs a woman in his life. He’s learning from you, so if you’re gonna go with girls, go with one who’s got some substance to her. That’s all I’m saying.”
A vision of Robin, instant and uninvited, flashed across his mind’s eye. He took a bite of the casserole—tuna, cream of mushroom soup, saltine crackers—and thought it was delicious. His kind of food. Not fusion cuisine, or whatever bullshit Robin had talked about. And why “fusion cuisine” should irritate him so, he didn’t know. Jake ate quickly, nodded absently as Mom ran down a list of all Cole’s faults, then put his plate in the sink and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. “I’ll talk to him,” he said wearily and went to find him to try again to reach him.
Chapter Sixteen
The phone rang so loud in Robin’s ear the next morning that she about had to peel herself off the ceiling. It was Lucy, telling her a car would be around to pick her up at nine to take her to the airport. “Splendid. Go away,” Robin croaked, hung up the phone, and stared bleary-eyed at the clock. 7 A.M. Christ Almighty, where was the fire?