From the Jump(75)

“Assembled in her room?” Deiss winks cheekily at me over her shoulder. “Like a shrine?”

“She’s talking about magazines,” I say. “You know how they’ll attach a picture to all those Watch Out for This Kind of Guy articles? Your face is usually at the top of them.”

“She’s teasing, of course,” Mom says. “In pictures she texts to show me how much fun she’s having in the big city. With you and Phoebe—such great style that one has! And that beautiful boy Mac, and that glamour girl with all the pretty jewelry. So many years, and it’s always the same little group.”

“We would’ve made other friends if we could,” Deiss says. “But nobody else can tolerate us.”

“It’s a miracle we found each other,” I say with a smirk over Mom’s murmured disagreement.

Deiss’s eyes soften, and he shifts toward me, his hand pressing into mine for a sweet moment. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”





CHAPTER 22


Over the next few hours, my mom rewrites our history so thoroughly that I find myself wondering if she’s gone into a coma without informing me, emerging with someone else’s memories. I keep waiting for her to develop an accent. She’s charming and bubbly, entertaining Deiss with story after story. Unfortunately, almost every word out of her mouth is a lie.

“I had to get rid of the big house when Liv left,” she says as she passes the plate of cookies she’s removed from their single-serve wrappers. “It was too empty all on my own. I needed something cozier.”

I reach under the table and squeeze her knee, hoping to wake her back to reality. What does she expect Deiss to think when he sees my old bedroom? The stuffed closets and postered walls are dead giveaways that a child grew up there. Is she going to make up a new sibling next? In this alternate reality, did I have a twin who ran away to join the circus?

She squeezes my hand back, like we’re doing some weird, under-the-table high five.

I take an unladylike gulp of tea and cough as it goes down wrong.

“Marriage just isn’t for me,” she says later as she tops Deiss’s cup for what must be the fifth time. “I like my freedom too much to settle down. But I’m sure you’ve seen that same trait in Livvie there. She’s had even more proposals than me.”

“Is that so?” Deiss leans back in his chair, grinning lazily at me.

“She hasn’t told you?” Mom says before I can answer No, that is certainly not so. “Oh, yes. It’s going to take a very special man to lock this one down.”

“Like an officer of the law?” I ask. “A psychiatrist? I honestly don’t know what we’re talking about here.”

“Don’t be so humble, Liv,” Mom says. “Lucas needs to know what a catch you are.”

“Yes,” Deiss says. “Please tell me where all these men before me went wrong so I can avoid following in their footsteps.”

“I wish I could,” I mumble, not wanting to embarrass Mom by calling out her fibs, but also unwilling to enhance them.

I expect things to get easier when we settle onto the couch and she drags out the photo albums. Unlike most people, I have no documentation of my awkward phases. My mom has always wanted me to look my best. I can’t think of a single photo she’s ever taken of me that didn’t involve multiple reshoots and angle changes. Even when I was a baby, she’d smudge a little lipstick on my cheeks to give me a healthy glow.

I reach for the remote and turn on the TV, earning an annoyed look from her. The man in the libido-enhancer commercial doesn’t fit the classy scene she’s attempting to create. Still, my mom soldiers on, raising her voice over the list of potential side effects. Rash. Trouble breathing. Blindness.

She squints as she reads the captions over the photos aloud, unwilling to put on the readers that “make her look old.” Deiss plays his part by cooing over my cuteness. But Mom veers wildly off script as she recounts the stories behind the photos.

“This is our old cat, Boots,” Mom says, showing Deiss a picture of the cat she discarded in an effort to keep Paul. “We had to give him up when I broke things off with an old boyfriend. Paul was so devastated to lose Liv that it only seemed right to let him take the cat. I thought having a little four-legged friend might keep him going.”

I almost snort aloud. Paul had no problem going. He practically ran out the door, slamming it shut behind him.

“That was very generous of you,” Deiss says. “It must have been difficult to give up your cat.”

It was. I feel a flare of anger at what we did to keep that rigid, judgmental man in our lives. Maybe it’s my mom’s revisionist history that’s knocked me out of familiar patterns, because I’ve never before let myself be angry at the loss of Boots. It’s been too easy to focus on pity for my mom, how sad it is that nothing she ever does is enough.

But Boots would’ve stayed with her. Plus, I loved him. How was it fair to take away something I loved in a desperate attempt to hold onto yet another man she claimed to love?

I stand up, mumbling something about the bathroom, and slip out of the room. The hallway is dim and dreary. A blown-up photograph of my mother in the tiara she got for winning Miss Brantley smiles at me from behind its frame.