A Mother's Homecoming(52)
“I love you, too,” he told his sister, “and I value your input. But that’s what it has to be—input, just something I take into consideration before making my final decisions. You two can’t run my life, and I don’t want you running people out of it. If you can’t respect that, then maybe Faith and I need to think about settling somewhere other than Mimosa.”
Gwendolyn made a strangled noise. Nick crossed the room to get her a glass of water out of the refrigerator’s filtered faucet.
After she drank, she was composed enough to ask, “You’d really take my only granddaughter away from me?”
“Honestly?” He looked her in the eye. “I don’t know. But I hope you won’t push me so that we have to find out.” He knew that his mother had been lonely since his dad died; the last thing he wanted was to remove even more family from her life. But this controlling, hateful side of her was the one aspect of her he couldn’t tolerate. He’d done so for years, thinking that he was being a dutiful son, but now he had Faith to think about, too.
“I don’t know if Pam will be staying in Mimosa much longer,” he said, wishing the thought of her going didn’t cause such a sharp twinge. “But we don’t own the town. She has every right to be here, and Faith is actually hoping to be closer to her mother before she leaves. We will be supportive and nontoxic in our remarks. Agreed?”
Leigh shot him a look. He doubted he’d be invited back to dinner at his sister’s anytime soon. And if he was, he was pretty sure she planned to spit in his food. But she nodded.
“Good. Thank you,” he said. “Mom?”
“You’ve always had a blind spot when it came to that woman,” Gwendolyn grumbled. “Now is no different. You’re not even a couple anymore, and you’d choose her over family?”
“Mom, for a while, she was my family, and I made a mistake in not choosing her. Trust me, you’re a better person than this.”
“I’ll be civil to her if I happen to see her,” Gwendolyn vowed grudgingly. “And I won’t speak an ill word of her in front of Faith. But the day Pamela Jo leaves town, I plan to dance a damn jig.”
Well, it was a start anyway.
Chapter Twelve
When headlights flashed through the untreated windows at the front of the house, Pam assumed her aunt and uncle had forgotten something. After all, they’d only left about ten minutes ago. She went to the front door, which she’d locked behind them, and was surprised to glimpse Nick coming up the sidewalk. Her first panicked reaction at seeing him out here unannounced on a Friday night was that something must have happened to Faith. But logic kicked in as she was opening the door—in an emergency situation, it would have been quicker to simply call her.
Still, she couldn’t help greeting him with, “Is everything okay? Faith, is she—”
“She’s fine,” he assured her. “She’s at a slumber party at her friend Tasha’s house. Of course, Morgan was invited, too, so they’ve probably all sneaked out and are merrily toilet-papering the neighborhood even as we speak.” He swatted away a couple of moths that were drawn to the light spilling from the doorway. “Can I come in?”
Pam took a step back, giving him room.
He glanced around, his expression unreadable. “You’re making progress.”
“Thanks,” she said shyly. She felt like a painter who’d had an unexpected visitor to the studio, viewing a potential masterpiece when it was only half-finished. Did Nick see the as yet unrealized charm in the place, or was his vision obscured by holes that still needed to be spackled in the walls and a naked lightbulb shining where she hadn’t hung the new fixture?
Furnishings in the house were sparse but adequate. In the living room, she had a couch from her uncle’s store and an Ole Miss beanbag chair. The closest she had to a table was a crate, but Uncle Ed was expecting a shipment of secondhand furniture from an estate sale next week; there might be something promising in that. She didn’t have a television, which wouldn’t have done her any good, anyway. Although the electricity was on, as well as running water in all but the smaller bathroom at the end of the hall, there was no gas or cable right now. The only cooking she could do was in the microwave, but it would be November before anyone would need central heating out here.
A semi-stocked refrigerator hummed in the next room, Aunt Julia had given her a free-standing, antique linen wardrobe for towels and sheets, and in the main bedroom, there was a futon that pulled out into a queen-size bed. Beats sleeping in my car.