Maybe This Time(17)

Caroline handed both me and my mom sheets of yellow paper. “Have fun,” she said.

I sighed and took the paper and pen. Andrew tilted his head to read my mom’s sheet. She moved the paper in between them.

“You should help me answer some questions about Soph,” my mom said.

“He really shouldn’t,” I said. “He knows nothing about me.”

Andrew picked up the pen and said to Mom, “I’ll be your scribe.” He scanned the questions, then started. “What’s her favorite book?”

I lowered my eyes, realizing this was actually going to happen, and the more I fought it, the more he’d enjoy it. I pretended like I didn’t care and tried to focus on the sheet in front of me. Mom’s favorite book. She hated to read. When she wasn’t at work, she was out with friends or watching a movie or bingeing a television show. I left it blank.

“Easy,” Mom said. “She loves Harry Potter.”

I did love Harry Potter, but it had been several years since it had been the top on my list.

“Favorite music?” Andrew asked.

I wrote down classic rock for my mom.

“She likes poppy stuff,” Mom replied. “Like Taylor Swift and those guys who dress like they’re from the eighties. There’s something about a moon in their name.”

“Walk the Moon?” Andrew asked.

“Maybe?” Mom said.

Again, she was a couple of years behind on my tastes.

“What’s the most embarrassing thing to happen to her?” he asked.

I raised my hand. “Right now is winning at the moment.”

Mom laughed. “No, no, no. I can do way better than this moment. When she was twelve, we were at the town Fourth of July celebration up at the lake—”

“Mom, seriously?”

Andrew leaned back in his chair like he was ready to be entertained.

“And she threw up all over Charlie, who she had a big crush on at the time.”

I put my head in my hands.

“Poor Charlie,” Andrew said.

“Poor Charlie?” I looked up, furious. “He’d put a worm from his fish bait in my sandwich! He deserved it.”

“Yes, Andrew, be careful.” Mom laughed. “You do not want to get on Sophie’s bad side.”

“I fear I am too late,” he said.

“You are,” I assured him.

Mom’s mouth fell open and then she rolled her eyes. “She’s just kidding.”

“I’m really not.”

“Back to the questions,” Andrew said, bending over the sheet of paper once more. “What does Sophie like to do on a rainy day?”

My mom squinted her eyes in thought.

I liked to drive. That’s what I liked to do. I liked to listen to the sound of the rain pounding on the metal roof of the car. Sometimes I would park at the lake or the canal or the historic house downtown and watch the way the drops pelted the water or poured off the eaves.

“She hates the rain. Thunder scares her.”

I looked at my mom in surprise. Thunder didn’t scare me. Not anymore. But then I realized my mom wasn’t just a couple of years behind in her knowledge of me. She was five years behind. She was still living in the summer my dad left. She’d stopped paying attention after that. It shouldn’t have surprised me. It didn’t. But I hadn’t had proof until now.

Andrew was staring at me and I relaxed my face to neutral.

“Are you?” he asked.

“Am I what?”

“Scared of thunder?”

“Are you trying to cheat? Hank’s Barbecue is on the line.” I wrote down the answer for my mom on the paper: Drink coffee and watch black-and-white movies.

When I looked up, Andrew’s gaze was moving between me and my mother. “You two look nothing alike,” he said.

Of course he was right. My mom was pale and blond with blue eyes. I had olive skin, brown hair, and dark brown eyes.

“Sophie takes after her father,” Mom said. “He was Italian.”

“Is, Mom,” I said.

“Is what?”

“Dad is Italian.”

“Was, is.” She waved her hand through the air like those two words conveyed the exact same meaning.

“Your dad is from Italy?” Andrew asked me.

“His parents. He grew up here,” my mom answered for me.

Perhaps it was the ominous tone in my mother’s voice that kept Andrew from asking for more information, but he looked back at the paper and said, “Okay, Ms. Evans, another question. Name one of Sophie’s bad habits.”

I wondered what she’d say for this. Five years ago my bad habits consisted of leaving dirty clothes on the floor or art supplies scattered all over the table. I put my pen to the paper and almost wrote: My mom only thinks about herself. But I stopped and chose instead: Habitually late.

“Maybe you should answer this one,” Mom said to Andrew.

I crossed my arms and looked at Andrew in a silent challenge that said: You better not. But I already knew Andrew’s bad habit was not listening, so of course he answered.

“Bad habit?” He bit the inside of his cheek and squinted his eyes. “Too judgmental. Or stubborn,” he said. “Or closed off.”