Hook, Line, and Sinker (Bellinger Sisters, #2)(89)

She folded her arms behind his neck, squeezing him tight. “Well! Caroline from 1A called and said there was a handsome man lurking in the parking lot, and I was going to inspect. Turns out it was my son!”

Fox attempted a chuckle, but his throat only sounded like a garbage disposal. God, he felt like he’d been run over, the aches and pains stemming from the middle of his chest. “Next time, don’t go check it out yourself. Call the police.”

“Oh, I was just going to look through Caroline’s binoculars and have a gab about it. Don’t worry about me, boy. I’m indestructible.” She stepped back and looked at him. “Not sure I can say the same for you. Never seen you look so green around the gills.”

“Yeah.” Finally, she took his elbow and ushered him inside, pointing him toward the small dining-room table, where he took a seat. The round piece of furniture was painted powder blue, covered in knickknacks, but the misshapen frog ashtray was what caught his attention. “Did I make this?”

“Sure did. Ceramics class your sophomore year of high school. Coffee?”

“No, thanks.”

Charlene sat down across from him with a steaming mug in her hand. “Well, go on.” She paused to take a sip. “Tell me what happened with Hannah.”

Fox’s chest wanted to cave in just hearing her name. “How did you know?”

“It’s like I always say, a man doesn’t bring a woman to bingo unless he’s serious about her.” She tapped a nail against her mug. “Nah. But in truth, I could tell by the way you looked at her, she was something real special.”

“How did I look at her?” He was afraid to find out.

“Ah, son. Like a summer day showing up after a hundred years of winter.”

Fox couldn’t speak for long moments. Could only stare down at the table, trying to get rid of the painful squeeze in his throat, seventeen incarnations of Hannah’s smile playing in his head. “Yeah, well. I told her it was over tonight. She disagreed.”

Charlene had to set her coffee down, she was laughing so hard. “Hold on to that one.” She used her wrist to swipe at her eyes. “She’s a keeper.”

“You don’t really think I could, though.” He twisted the ceramic frog on the table. “Hold on to her. Hold on to anyone.”

His mother’s laughter cut off abruptly. “And why not?”

“You know why.”

“I surely do not.”

Fox laughed without humor. “You know, Ma. The way I kept Dad’s legacy alive. The way I’ve carried on more than half my life now. That’s what I know. That’s what I’m used to. It’s no use trying to be something I’m not. And, Jesus, I’m definitely not one half of a couple.”

Charlene fell silent, looking almost pained. Proof that she agreed. Maybe she didn’t want to say it out loud, but she knew he spoke the truth.

It was too hard to witness her disappointment, but when Fox stood to leave, Charlene spoke and he lowered back into the seat.

“You never had the chance to try . . . to be anything else. ‘He’s going to be a heartbreaker, just like his father.’ That’s what everyone used to say, and I laughed. I laughed, but it stuck. And then . . .”

“What?”

“This is hard to talk about,” she said quietly, standing to top off her coffee, eventually sitting back down and visibly gathering her poise. “I’d spent years of my life trying to change your father. Make him a home, make him happy with me and me alone. Us alone. Well, you know how that worked out. He came home smelling like a perfume factory five nights out of seven.” She paused to huff a breath. “When you got older and started looking like him, I guess . . . I guess I was too scared to try. To teach you how to be different from him and have my heart broken all over again if you resisted. So I just . . . I didn’t resist. In fact, I joined in with the chorus and encouraged you to break hearts and . . . and the coffee tin . . .” She covered her face with her hands. “I want to die just thinking about it.”

On reflex, Fox glanced at the cabinet, as if he might find it there, stuffed full of condom money. Even though he wouldn’t. Even though it wasn’t the same house. “It’s okay, Ma.”

“No, it’s not.” She shook her head. “I needed to explain to you, Fox, that you’re nothing like him. To correct the damaging things you believed about yourself. These misconceptions. But you’d already started doing exactly what we encouraged you to do from the start. When you came back from college, you’d retreated into a hard shell. There was no talking to you then. And here we are now, years later. Here we are.”

Fox ran back through everything she’d said, his deepest insecurities exposed like a raw nerve, but so what. Nothing hurt like Hannah leaving hurt. Not even this. “If you don’t think I’m anything like him, why do you flinch every time you see me?”

Charlene paled. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize I was doing that.” A beat passed. “Some of the time, I can live with the guilt of failing you. When I see you, though, that guilt hits me like a backhand to the cheek. That flinch is for me, not you.”

An unexpected burn started behind his eyes.

Something hard began to erode in the vicinity of his heart.

“I remember some of the things he said to you, all the way back to fourth grade, fifth grade. Which one in the class was your girlfriend? When were you going to start going on dates? Boy, you’ll have your pick of the litter! And I thought it was funny. I even said those things myself once in a while.” She reached for her pack of cigarettes, tapped one out and lit it, blowing the smoke out of the side of her mouth. “Should have been encouraging you to do well in class. Or join clubs. Instead, we made life about . . . intimacy for you. From the damn jump. And I don’t have any excuse except to say, your father’s life was women. By default, so was mine. The affairs surrounded us at the time, took up all the air. We let it hurt our son, too. Let it turn into a shadow to follow you around. That’s the real tragedy. Not the marriage.”