“You okay, Lou?” I asked him, frowning.
He wasn’t looking at me when I questioned him, but his blue eyes swung to me and he nodded the most unconvincing nod I’d ever seen.
“Are you sure? Did you sleep bad?” The longer I took him in, the worse he looked.
“Yeah,” he answered, scrunching up that adorable nose for a moment. “My head hurts.”
I’d heard that excuse before from Josh. “A little or a lot?”
He shrugged.
Well, it couldn’t be that bad if he wasn’t complaining. “Can you try to go to school?”
He nodded.
In my gut, I knew that was a weird way for him to respond. Josh was the body language one of the two; Lou usually said whatever was on his mind. But I still dropped to a knee and gave him a hug, touching his cool forehead and cooler cheeks. His coloring was off, but he wasn’t warm. His arms wrapped around my neck and he gave me a squeeze.
By the time Josh came back, Lou was already buckled into the booster seat that he hated and I had just slammed his door shut. Josh tossed the keys over and I asked just to be sure, “Did you check that the front door really closed?”
He shot me a look as he opened the other passenger door. “Yes.”
“Okay, attitude.” He made it seem like he hadn’t left it unlocked before. Jesus.
“Tia, your purse,” Louie mentioned in a soft voice the minute I opened the driver side door to get in.
My—
Damn it. I’d left it inside.
Ignoring the smug look I would bet an ovary Josh was throwing my way, I ran back to the house, in and out of it in less than two minutes. As I jogged toward the car, I spotted that big Ford pickup backing out of the driveway. I waved, not sure if Dallas had even seen me or not.
At their school fifteen minutes later, I had to get out of the car and go with them to the principal’s office to get tardy passes, earning a snarky comment from the secretary who had to write the notes about how important it was for “children to get to school on time.” Like she never occasionally ran late. Ugh.
My day didn’t get any better once I got to work.
Sean had shown up to work over an hour late, complaining about how he wasn’t feeling well and wasn’t sure he’d be able to stay all day, and put me on edge. When my cell started vibrating at nearly noon, I was in the middle of a wash and couldn’t answer. It wasn’t until an hour later, in-between appointments, when my phone started vibrating again that I was able to answer. My mom’s name flashed across the screen. Eyeing my coworker and his customer out of the corner of my eye, I headed outside.
“Bueno?”
“Diana, I’ve tried calling you three times,” my mom hissed, catching me totally off guard.
“I’m at work, Mamá. I can’t pick up the phone if I have a customer,” I replied, frowning and wondering what was up with her. She knew all of this. I wouldn’t call her while she was working and get all bent out of shape if she didn’t answer.
“Si, pues maybe you can get a job where you can,” she said in Spanish, her tone exasperated and pretty damn brutal.
“I don’t think jobs like that exist,” I replied, wondering what I’d done to deserve another bad attitude so soon.
She obviously didn’t see the truth in my words because the attitude she called me with went nowhere. “Maybe if you would have gone to college like we wanted you to—”
Oh, fuck my life. It had been at least a month since the last time she’d given me this talk. It didn’t matter that I did okay at a job I enjoyed and was pretty damn good at. It also didn’t matter that I had only once asked to borrow money from my parents soon after I’d moved out; I hadn’t gotten a degree. What had I been thinking? She brought up me not going to college at least three times a year, if I was lucky. If I wasn’t lucky, it came up once a month or more.
“I’m at work. Do you need something?” I cut her off, not even remotely caring that I was being just as rude as she was. There was something about not wanting to have this conversation right by the salon that had me looking both ways and crossing the street, wanting to get away so that Sean and his customer couldn’t see, much less hear whatever shit was about to come out of my mom’s mouth and mine. It felt too personal already.
“If you would’ve answered, you would know Louie se enfermó. You didn’t answer so they called here. I went to pick him up already, and I took him to the clinica at the pharmacy. He said he hasn’t been feeling good for days—”
My heart sank. I knew he hadn’t looked well that morning, but I’d asked him. I started pacing up and down the sidewalk outside.
“He has strep. Do you know if Joshua is feeling okay?”
Rubbing my forehead, I told her the truth. “He hasn’t told me he was sick. I think he’s fine.”
“Ay, Diana. You don’t ask if they’re feeling okay?”
I almost told her that it wasn’t like she’d asked me daily if I was feeling fine or not, but I kept my mouth shut. “No, Mamá. They only tell me if they aren’t.”
“Well, Josh might be sick too. Maybe you should ask from now on, no? You have to remember you don’t only take care of yourself now. You have to take care of them too. Pay more attention.”
It wasn’t very often my mom flayed my parenting skills, but when she went beyond a little comment here and there, she went in for the kill. This was one of those moments. My guilt for not insisting that Louie tell me he was feeling crappy was bad enough, but my mom’s words just severed all the veins and arteries that connected my heart to the rest of my body. I should have asked more questions when I’d noticed his pallor. She was right. It was my fault, and I felt awful instantly.
In a cool, smaller voice, I said, “Okay. I get it. Thank you for picking up Louie. Let me know how much I owe you for the doctor’s visit, and I’ll pay you back—”
“You don’t have to pay me anything.”
Well, I sure as hell didn’t want to owe her a cent after the reaming she’d just given me. “No, I’ll pay you for it and the medicine. I’ll call Josh’s school right now and check on him. Thank you for picking up, Lou.”
“You don’t have to thank me,” my mom said as if she could sense the distance I was throwing between us. This had always been our relationship: she went in like a battering ram and didn’t worry about what she damaged until afterward. I didn’t want to think too much about how similar we might be from time to time.
“Well, I want to. If he isn’t feeling well, I’ll call the Larsens and see if they can pick up Josh so you don’t have to. You’ve done enough. Thank you.”
“Diana—”
“I need to get back to work. If it’s an emergency call my work. I gave the school the number for the salon, but I guess they didn’t write it down. I’ll make sure to take your number off the contact list—”