My body jolted at the sight.
“What do you think?” he asked, pointing to his head, which had hair that looked wet but all of it stuck up on end like he was in the middle of a cartoon electrocution.
“Uh…” I mumbled, not knowing what to say since what I thought wasn’t good.
“It’s got the wet look now but it’ll calm down when it dries,” he informed me.
I had experience with this, considering my son went from not caring about his appearance to being all about it, this in the expanse of about two weeks. Thus I knew that men’s hair with product that was going to dry did not stick up on end like that.
“How much did you use?” I asked as he sauntered toward me, his gait like his dad’s, except cute rather than hot.
“About half a pudding cup,” he answered.
Oh dear.
“Just to say, kiddo, you’re supposed to use about the size of a dime.”
He’d stopped in front of me, and at my words, his eyes got big. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. You use as much as you did, it’s gonna dry just like that.” And take about three washings to get it out, something I decided not to inform him of at that time since we should be leaving.
“Crap!” he yelled, turned and ran back down the hall.
“Cillian!” I called after him just as the bathroom door slammed. “We need to leave!”
“Two secs!” he shouted back.
“Shit,” I whispered, deciding Aisling first, Cillian second, when the doorbell rang.
“Get it, Amy!” Cillian hollered.
Nothing from Aisling.
“Shit,” I repeated, moving to the door.
I opened it and saw on the stoop a pretty, petite, curvy woman with dark blonde hair who was perhaps five years older than me. She wore attractive clothes, had a great handbag and was staring at me like a deer caught in headlights.
“Hi. Can I help you?” I asked politely.
“You’re Amy,” she replied strangely breathily, like she was winded because she showed up at Mickey’s door after a five K run.
My head twitched at the knowledge she had that knowledge and I confirmed cautiously, “Yes.”
She continued to stare at me, taking me in, then looked away only to look right back and announce, “I’m Rhiannon.”
Oh shit.
“Um…hi,” I repeated.
“Is Mickey here?” she asked.
“No, he’s in town. Meeting at the firehouse. I’m taking the kids in to join him for the town council thing.”
“Right, right. I forgot,” she mumbled, shifting, fidgeting. She then dropped her keys, bent quickly to pick them up and straightened, not looking at me. “I’ll call him.”
“Do you want me to tell him you came by?” I asked.
“Yes, yeah, that’d be good,” she answered, making as if to turn but not doing it and instead saying to me. “Um…thanks.”
“Do you want to say hi to the kids?” I offered quietly.
She looked beyond me, pain gathered in her features, released and she glanced at me before she looked to my shoulder. “No. I don’t want to delay you. I’ll call them too.”
“It’s no problem,” I lied, since it was considering we were already late.
She looked to her watch then to my shoulder. “Council meetings begin at six thirty so I’d probably just make you late. That’s okay. I’ll see them soon.”
“All right,” I said, still quietly.
“Um…yes, well…” She shifted again as if to turn away, shifted back, didn’t reach my eyes, and said, “Well, ’bye.”
“’Bye, Rhiannon. Nice to meet you.”
That was when she looked me right in the eyes and I again saw the pain.
That didn’t sit great with me not only because of what might be behind it but because it wasn’t fun seeing she had it.
“Yeah, Amy. Nice to meet you too.”
I forced a smile.
She attempted to force one back but before she succeeded, she turned and hurried down the walk toward her car in the drive.
I watched her, rattled by that encounter, but only for a second before I closed the door, partly so she wouldn’t catch me watching her, mostly because I really needed to get the kids moving.
I dug my phone out of my purse and texted Mickey, Running late. Will text when we’re on our way.
I gave him only that. The news about Rhiannon could wait.
I sent that and I hurried to Aisling’s door.
It had a poster of a band on it and the good news about that was it was not a boy band. In fact, it shared the knowledge she had excellent taste in music.
I knocked, put my hand to the knob and opened it, poking my head in.
I’d never seen her room. The door was always closed.
Now I saw it had been a little girl’s room, all pink and purple and flowery, but that evidence now lay beneath a lot of clutter, a bunch of spent clothes strewn everywhere, a TV with piles of DVD boxes all around, an unmade bed and a liberal coating of more band posters.
However, there was one other poster. A movie poster. A movie poster that, in its aloneness as a movie poster in Aisling’s room rather than it being one of many, concerned me.
The poster was for the River Phoenix, Lili Taylor movie that had come out decades before.
Dogfight.
My eyes swept back, taking in a plethora of makeup and hair stuff on top of her dresser, all of it coated with a visible layer of dust, and I saw her in bed amidst the mussed sheets (as well as discarded clothes), back against the headboard, book in her hands.
Before I could say a word, she told me, “Dad won’t mind.”
I stepped in but not far. “I think he will, blossom. This is a big night for the department and I’m thinking that your dad would never ask you kids to go to a boring town council meeting unless it meant something to him. And anyway, we’re getting dinner after.”
“I can get something to eat here,” she told me.
“You can but my guess is we’re not only going out to dinner after because we’re all together and it’ll be too late to cook anything, but because he’s hoping to have something to celebrate.”
“You and Cill and Dad can do that without me,” she replied.
I took another step further into her room, doing it carefully, but not very successfully, to avoid the layer of clothes covering the floor. “We can, but your dad won’t want us to. He’ll want you there.”
She lifted her chin. “Am—”
Abruptly, I jerked my head to the movie poster. “Have you seen that movie?”
Her eyes darted to the poster, to me, then to my stomach. “Yeah. Own it.”
“An old movie for you to be into,” I prodded.
“Yeah, well, my brother wants to be a fighter pilot because of an even older movie,” she pointed out accurately. “We’re a movie family.”
This could not be denied.
“Something in that movie that speaks to you like Tom Cruise speaks to your brother?” I pushed, but did it on a smile, hoping that would work to get her to open up to me, but doing that not thinking it was a probability.
I was correct.
Her gaze came to mine. “Well, yeah. Obviously.”
It was far from obvious to me.
She said no more.