Well Matched (Well Met #3)(51)

“Ha.” Mitch had taken off a few minutes before, after asking roughly five hundred times if I could make it through the rest of the day without him. I brushed off his innuendo with a laugh and sent him on his way, sternly quelling the butterflies in my stomach.

“No, I mean it. When I talked to him last night he said he’d help you out, but he went above and beyond, right? He looked really convincing, pretending to be your boyfriend.”

“Right.” Pretending. The butterflies in my stomach thudded to their deaths. It had all been fake. For a few minutes there I had completely forgotten. And in those few minutes I’d felt better than I had in . . . well, probably ever.



* * *



? ? ?

“Hey, Mom.”

I looked up from my phone. Caitlin stood in front of me, a disheveled graduate. The heat of the day had set in, and it was definitely getting to her. She’d shucked the cheap polyester gown and carried it over one arm, the mortarboard dangling from the same hand.

“Hey, baby,” I said. “Need a hair tie?” Not even waiting for an answer, I started digging in my purse. Since our house had two long-haired women in it, there was always a handful of hair ties at the bottom of my bag.

“Please.” She took the thin elastic band, dropping her graduation cap and gown to the bleacher next to me before catching her hair back in a ponytail. I glanced around while she did so.

“Where’s . . . did your father take off?” I almost winced at the way I phrased the question. That was all her father did, her whole life. Take off.

But Caitlin just nodded. “Yeah, he said he needed to get on the road. Going home, I guess.” Her voice was carefully neutral, and I tried hard to parse how she was feeling.

“Do you want to call him? If you want to spend a little more time, we can . . .” I had no idea how to finish that sentence. We can what, exactly? Have an excruciating lunch together? But this was Caitlin’s day. If that was what she wanted, I would make it happen.

She waved a hand. “Nah.” She picked up her stuff as I got to my feet, and we started the long walk to the parking lot. “I’m glad he came, though. It was good to talk to him. He said we’ll stay in touch.” She shrugged. “He’s nice, I guess. But he’s not family. I already have plenty of that here. You. Emily and Mr. G. And . . . you know, Coach Malone.” She slipped a side-eye in my direction, and I groaned and let my head fall back on my neck.

“Not you too! I told you, there’s nothing going on . . .”

She held up her hands. “I’m just saying! You went out of town with him last weekend. Not to mention, Toby told me last night that he saw you talking to Coach Malone a few weeks ago, after baseball practice. Was that when you started not dating him?” Her eyebrow went up, and I resented that she could do that. Something else she must have picked up from her father.

“Okay. I’ll tell you again. I’m not dating Coach Malone.” I drew in a deep breath. “But—and this is petty, so don’t ever do this—it’s possible that I pretended like I was today when I saw your father.”

Caitlin smirked. “Smart.”

I had no response for that, at least not one I wanted to share with my daughter. “Your teachers are great,” I said, desperate for a subject change. “I’m sorry I wasn’t like the other moms. You know, the ones that volunteered and did stuff like that.”

She waved it off. “It’s okay. It’s not your thing. I know that. Like with the Ren Faire, remember? When I first started, I needed a chaperone?”

“Yeah, but . . .” My SUV was in sight, and I pushed the remote on my keychain, unlocking the doors. “We’d just been in the accident. I couldn’t even walk. Emily handled that for me.”

“She did. But, Mom.” She dumped her stuff in the back seat and then climbed into the passenger seat. “Were you really going to volunteer?”

“Well, I’m sure I . . .” But it was my turn to trail off, because my kid knew me well. I didn’t volunteer. I didn’t get involved.

All these years I thought I’d been a good mom, had done a good job raising Caitlin on my own. But keeping to myself had meant missing a lot. And it was too late now.

“Yeah.” Caitlin’s voice was gentle, understanding even, and it was weird to be handled this way by my own kid. “But hey,” she said. “Don’t worry about it. Everything worked out, right? Emily did the Ren Faire with me, and she met Mr. G. So that’s a happy ending.”

“Good point.” I smiled as I clicked my seat belt. “Things work out the way they’re supposed to, I guess.” I didn’t want to follow that train of thought too far, because what other awful things in my life would turn out to be blessings in disguise? My car accident? My divorce? Everything in my life—good and bad—led to me being the person I was now. The life I had now.

And on days like this, that life didn’t seem so bad.





Fourteen





For years, I’d looked forward to Caitlin’s graduation day as an ending. The culmination of my job as a full-time mother, signaling the beginning of me regaining time for myself. With the date circled in red in the calendar of my mind, I thought that things would somehow be calmer, easier, once that day was behind us. After all, I’d successfully raised a daughter. She was poised to take her first steps out into the world, and I would be that proverbial empty nester.