He still didn’t know what that searching thing was about, but he wondered if it had anything to do with the way she’d told him he didn’t belong here all those days ago.
Still, she was right. It could be about hockey, and…he didn’t want to think too hard about belonging here and what Mel might think of that. What he might think of that. So he rolled off her and answered.
“Sharpe.”
“Daniel.”
He immediately sat a little straighter, the feminine voice crackling through his crappy service shocking the hell out of him. “Mom. Hey, is everything all right?”
There was a pause, and dread curled in his stomach. Something must be wrong. Mom almost never called him.
“Everything is fine. I just hadn’t heard from you.”
“Oh, well, I emailed you when I got here.”
“Yes, but…” Another pause. The pauses that had begun in those weeks after she’d told him her and Dad were getting a divorce. Silences and watching and pauses, always so careful with what she said to him.
Because otherwise he might break again.
Because they were a reminder of all the ways he hadn’t handled anything, had caused his mother too much stress to stay, he couldn’t stand the pauses, the silences. To the point where they almost never talked. When he’d been a kid, it had been letters. Now, it was emails and the occasional text.
Calls on holidays only.
But if everything was okay, he didn’t understand the reason for this call. “My service isn’t the best, maybe we can—”
“I’m worried about you.”
“Worried about me?” Dan glanced at Mel as she got to her feet, brushing off her pants, her back to him. “Why?”
“I thought for sure you’d be home by now.”
“I told you this was for the summer.” Dan got to his feet, trying to decipher the tension in Mel’s shoulders.
“I know, but…” He wanted to beat his head against the impenetrable wall of those pauses. Her carefulness with him. Not thirty years between then and now, between acting out as a kindergartner and being a thirty-five-year-old man, had changed the way she approached him.
He watched Mel as she strode away.
What was that about?
“Surely you’re tired of that place. I know you didn’t agree with me that it was tossing money away, but you see that now. Surely.”
Dan tried to make sense of what Mom was saying. She hadn’t thought he’d…last this long? Figured he’d screw this up along with everything else? Well, yeah, why should he be surprised? He wasn’t the only one who thought hockey was about all he was good at, and he’d never given anyone any reason to believe otherwise.
But, good God, he should be beyond caring if his mommy had any faith in him.
“Actually, I think…” His glance landed on Mel hefting the giant toolbox out of the back of her truck. Mountains in the background, her hat pulled low, and that weird chest-expanding feeling again. “I think this is a good place to be. To build.”
Crackling silence. A sigh. More silence. Dan closed his eyes and tried to wait it out, tried to find a way to be a better son. Give her whatever it is she was always quietly wanting from him, to prove she hadn’t broken him irrevocably.
But he didn’t have it in him. Not the patience or maybe not even the desire. He didn’t know, didn’t want to know. He wasn’t broken. He was just…a person. “I have to go, Mom. But if you have any more questions or financial concerns, email me. I’ve got my Internet set up and everything.”
“Of course.”
An agreement that was anything but.
“Bye, Mom,” he said, because he honestly didn’t know what else to give her.
“Good-bye, Daniel. I…” Pause. Pause. Pause. Silence. “Well, take care of yourself.”
“You too, Mom.” Though it gave him a lump in his gut to do it, he hit End and shoved his phone back in his pocket.
He took a minute to watch Mel. She was busying herself with things. He had no idea what things. He had no idea…
He needed to shove it out of his brain. There were things he did have ideas about. Llamas. Talking Mel back into his bed.
He forced himself to leisurely stroll to where she stood next to his porch. “Sorry about that interruption.”
She shrugged. “Nothing to apologize for. I was thinking we could open up those stalls like we talked about, and then head to town this afternoon to get you a hose.”
“I thought I was going to make you breakfast.” He reached out for her braid, twirled a loose end around his finger.
But she didn’t relax. Didn’t loosen. She was coiled tight, no give in her. He couldn’t for the life of him figure that out.
“I’m not all that hungry,” she said, hefting her toolbox onto his porch.
“Does this have something to do with…” He trailed off because he felt strange about bringing up her outburst about her mother leaving, and because she looked uncomfortable, and he just wanted that moment in the grass again, when he’d been about to kiss her and that was all that mattered.
“She was checking up on you.”