A Mother's Homecoming(42)
Nick cleared his throat. “You’ve really only seen her the once that I didn’t know about, at the salon?”
“Of course.”
“She made it sound like more. I wish I knew why. We’ve always been close, so why would she lie to me? Especially about something likely to make me angry. I thought kids lied when they were trying to cover their butts, not to get themselves into trouble.”
Pam didn’t have a simple answer for him, but she resented being used as a pawn in Faith’s adolescent struggles with her father.
“I guess,” he concluded, “she thought she could justify her actions by making them sound like her long-lost mother’s idea, so she exaggerated the amount of time you’ve spent together. I’ve caught that friend of hers in situations like this. Since Morgan’s parents are divorced, she feels like she can play them off each other with no one the wiser. It’s hard for them to verify stories if they don’t even speak to each other.”
“Maybe,” Pam said slowly, “we can nip this in the bud if we show Faith we are willing to talk to each other.”
“Or willing to call each other screaming and hurling unfounded accusations?” he asked ruefully. “I don’t normally yell like that.”
“I’ll cut you a break this once,” she said, her tone light. While he’d definitely overreacted, these were extenuating circumstances. He was a single father staring down the barrel of the teenage years—that alone could periodically send a sane parent over the edge, much less a dad contending with his ex popping back into their lives after more than a decade. “Just don’t let it happen again.”
She’d learned to be a more forgiving person, but she wasn’t a doormat. He didn’t get a free pass to bite her head off whenever Faith frustrated him.
“You’re one hundred percent right,” he agreed. “This can’t happen again, and I don’t just mean my temper tantrum. We should show her, together, that she can’t pull this crap. What are you doing tomorrow afternoon?”
PAM DROVE DOWN Meadowberry, grinning as she passed Trudy’s house. I should stop by later and say hi. The old woman would no doubt bluster as if Pam were interrupting something, but it was an act. Probably. Trudy had come into the salon two separate times since Pam started working there. The first to get her curls set, then a few days later for a manicure. And while Trudy had been as crusty as ever, not saying anything that could be considered warm directly to her erstwhile tenant, she was quick to cut Nancy off at the knees whenever the former cheerleader started in on Pam.
It was like having a knight to ride to her rescue. A misanthropic, senior-citizen knight who wore floral muumuus in place of armor.
Pam was still smiling over the image when she pulled into Nick’s driveway. She’d agreed to meet him at his house for a late lunch. Then the two of them would confront Faith as soon as she got home from school. It’ll be an ambush, Nick had predicted gleefully. At the relish in his voice, Pam had almost felt a twinge of pity for their duplicitous daughter.
She climbed out of her car, processing more of her surroundings. Her stomach fluttered with nerves. Everything was just so domestic—Shepard stenciled on the mailbox, Faith’s bike chained up on the covered porch, a pair of muddy male boots by the front door. The house itself looked comfortable, nice without being pretentious or intimidating. A great place to raise a family and unlike any place she had ever lived.
Aunt Julia and Uncle Ed’s home was a worthy attempt, she supposed, but smaller and cramped with fussy antiques that didn’t encourage a person to kick back and relax.
Pam rang the doorbell, then forced herself to stand stock-still. She called on old drama discipline, the knowledge that she was visible on stage and couldn’t fidget. But it took effort, hearing Nick’s approaching footsteps on the other side of the door, not to fuss with her hair or smooth her navy skirt or pull at the loose thread she’d just noticed on the hem of her bronze top. Her clothes were rather lackluster today, but she’d felt the occasion called for something stern.
The door swung open, and Nick smiled at her. “Hey.” And with that voice, those eyes, he could have been seventeen.
And she was seventeen again, too, her entire being lighting up at the sight of him. “Hi.” But then she blinked, and the faint lines that hadn’t been around his eyes came into focus. He wore a black polo shirt that bore his company’s logo, not a heather gray T-shirt that said Mimosa High Athletics.