Live to Tell (Live to Tell #1)(44)
Ryan shrugs and reaches for the handle.
“Careful—don’t let anything in with you.” She eyes the moths flitting around the overhead bulb. “Why didn’t you call me for a ride?”
“You know…’cause I knew you were busy.”
“Ryan, it’s dark out and you’re twelve years old. You don’t go walking around town by yourself at night.”
“I was fine.”
“You were lucky. Remember what I told you—bad things happen everywhere, all the time.”
Why does that phrase keep popping into her head?
This time, it sparks renewed trepidation. She hasn’t heard from Nick yet.
“Mom, I’m fine,” Ryan tells her.
“Yes, and thank God for that.” Lauren can just imagine what Janet Wasserman thinks about a single mother who can’t be bothered to pick up her child. Then again… “I’m surprised Ian’s mother let you go off alone, Ry.”
“Um, she didn’t really know. I just kind of…left.”
“Did you have a fight with Ian or something?”
“Nope. Can we not talk about this right now? You kind of sound like Mrs. Wasserman.”
“Oh, God help me.”
Ryan snorts.
“Sorry. That just slipped out. Forget I said that. You know I like Ian’s mother a lot.”
“Yeah, Mom, sure you do.”
“I do,” Lauren protests—not very convincingly, it seems, because Ryan shakes his head.
The boys have been friends since kindergarten, and Lauren was friendly enough with Janet Wasserman over the years, though never particularly close. Swapping playdates, chipping in for classmates’ birthday gifts, arranging rides to and from school activities…those were the kinds of things she was comfortable discussing with Janet.
Not personal lives, though. Janet has long held a well-deserved reputation as a busybody. Harmless, but a busybody nonetheless.
“Come on, Mom,” Ryan says, “she’s not your friend.”
“No,” Lauren admits. “Not lately. Maybe I once would have considered her a friend, though.”
“Why did you lose all your friends when you and Dad split up?”
Startled by the question, she’s about to deny Ryan’s assumption. But why? He’s not blind, or stupid. He knows a circle of women no longer surrounds her—that Trilby is all she has left.
“I’m not sure why, exactly, Ry. I guess when you go through hard times, you find out who your true friends are.”
She watches him digest that and prays it’s not a lesson he’ll have to learn the hard way.
“Do you want to make new friends?” he asks.
“Sure. But it’s not easy.” Not wanting him to feel sorry for her, she changes the subject—sort of. “So did Mrs. Wasserman ask you a lot of questions?”
“Pretty much.”
“About what?”
“You know…stuff.”
“Me and Dad?”
Ryan looks uncomfortable, and Lauren decides there’s no such thing as a harmless busybody.
“What did she want to know?”
“Everything.”
“What did you tell her?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, Ry…” Lauren loops her arms around her son’s shoulders. He’s almost as tall as she is. Someday soon, he’ll be taller. But he’s still her little boy.
Ryan was always so easygoing, so nurturing, so sweet. So…
On my side.
Not that he’s chosen sides in the divorce—they’ve been careful not to drag the kids into it. Of Lauren’s three children, though, it’s her son who has always made her feel like half of a two-man team that sticks together, win or lose. Always.
Years ago, when Ryan was just a toddler, she stubbed her toe. She remembers hopping around in pain, trying not to curse in front of the kids. Ryan disappeared into the next room and came back with a box of SpongeBob Band-Aids and the boo-boo bunny ice pack from the freezer.
“I fix you up, Mommy,” he said, and gently kissed her toe.
She cried.
She cried again when she repeated the story to Nick that night.
“I feel like he thinks he has to be the little man of the house when you’re not home,” she told him. “Lucy, she’s in her own world. It’s not that she doesn’t care—it’s more that she doesn’t notice. But Ryan looks out for me.”
“That’s good. When you’re old and decrepit, he can come take you out in your wheelchair to the early-bird special,” was Nick’s glib response.
“Really? Where will you be?” she asked indignantly.
“Dead and gone, I’m sure.”
He was kidding around, but even at the time, she was sobered by the thought of being widowed, even in the far-off future. It was inconceivable that Nick might die and leave her alone one day—even though women statistically tend to outlive their husbands, and he was almost eight years older than Lauren in the first place.
She didn’t like to think about it, though. They had a whole lifetime ahead of them.
Till death do us part.
Nick, apparently, heard it wrong.
Nick heard Till Beth do us part.