Mick finishes the meatloaf quickly, loads the plate into the dishwasher, and retrieves his backpack from the mud room. When he heads upstairs to do his homework, his mother still stands sipping water, absently looking out the window above the sink.
A half hour later, when he comes back down, she’s in her study with the door closed. He knocks and then opens it a crack.
“Mom? I have to go to work.”
“Okay, I’m coming.”
He hears her say, “I have to go. I’ll call you back later,” and realizes she’s on the phone.
“Who was that?” he asks as she follows him to the kitchen.
“Aunt Noreen.”
“What did she want?”
“Nothing. You know, we were just . . . catching up.”
“We’re not going out there for Christmas, are we?”
“No!” she says so quickly that Mick realizes she’s no more eager to do that than he is. The funny thing about Mom is that she’s always urging him and Katie and Braden to stay close to each other, but she barely talks to her own sister and brothers. Mick’s uncles live far away and their kids are so much older that Mick’s cousin Andrew is getting married next summer. Aunt Noreen is within a few hours’ drive, but she and Mom are so different. Just like Mick and his siblings. Katie and Braden are pretty close to perfect, while he’s . . .
Just not.
“Have you seen my keys?” Mom asks, rummaging around the kitchen.
“No.”
She finally finds them in the pocket of the coat she’d draped over the stool earlier, and they leave for Marrana’s.
Ordinarily, Mick looks forward to working, but not tonight. He knows Brianna won’t be there and that Zach will. They’d passed each other a few times in the hall at school today, and Zach barely said hi.
Terrific. He probably screwed up a friendship he’d really come to value.
“What’s going on?”
Mom’s voice startles him, and he looks over to see that they’re stopped at a light and she’s watching him.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“Something’s bothering you. I’m going to guess it’s a girl,” says Mom the Psychic.
“Well, you’re wrong.” The lie pops out easily, but it doesn’t sound very convincing.
“What is it, then? You don’t have to tell me, but I know something’s bothering you and I feel like I’ve kind of dropped the ball on this mom thing lately.”
Caught off guard by that candid admission, he says, “What do you mean?”
“I’ve been so busy with . . . work. I don’t think I’ve given you the attention you deserve.”
“Mom, I’m good. With attention, I mean. And everything else.”
“I was thinking maybe I can get you an appointment with a therapist, if you wanted someone to talk to about—-”
“No! No way. No. I don’t need a therapist. I’m fine.”
The light changes and she starts driving again, looking at the road instead of him. “So your heart isn’t broken?”
“No. I just . . . I had a stupid fight with a friend of mine.”
“Who?”
“You don’t know him.” Another lie. She does know Zach, along with every other kid in Mundy’s Landing.
“So what happened, Mick?”
“It’s my fault. I did something stupid. Nothing horrible, you know, just . . . something I wouldn’t have done if I’d stopped to think.”
“Tell him that.”
“I did, and I apologized but I don’t think that matters.”
“It happens to the best of us. You did the right thing when you apologized. All you can do is be accountable and hope he’ll forgive you. If it wasn’t horrible, he probably will. And if it was . . .” She shakes her head, not finishing the sentence.
But Mick does, in his head: . . . then you probably don’t deserve to be forgiven.
“What was that about?” Kevin asks when Noreen walks back into the kitchen, cell phone in hand.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing? Your sister starts texting you out of the blue and you drop everything to go call her at a time like this? That’s not ‘nothing.’ ”
No, it’s isn’t nothing. But it’s not as urgent as Noreen made it out to be when she interrupted Kevin mid--sentence to say she had to call her sister.