Night Road(36)

Zach grinned. From across the glittering expanse of their formal dining table, with his blond hair messy from sleep, he looked about thirteen years old. “A promise ring.”

Silence fell. Even Miles frowned. His hand paused midreach. “Excuse me?”

Across the table from Zach, Mother straightened. “Excuse me, did you say a ring?”

“It’s really pretty,” Mia said, pulling a frosted bit from her cinnamon roll. She popped it into her mouth. “Mom? Are you having a stroke?”

Jude had to force herself to remain calm. Her son—her not quite eighteen-year-old son—had given his girlfriend a ring for Christmas. “And what exactly are you promising Lexi?” She felt Miles lean toward her. His fingers closed around her wrist.

“It means I promise to marry her someday.”

“Oh, look. We’re out of fruit,” Miles said evenly. “Here, Jude. I’ll help you get some more.” Before she could protest—she still felt frozen—he led her out of the dining room and into the big kitchen.

“What the—”

“Shhh,” he said, pulling her behind the fridge. “They’ll hear you.”

“No shit,” she said. “I want him to hear me.”

“We can’t come down on him about this.”

“You think it’s okay for our son to give a promise ring to a girl he’s been dating for three months?”

“Of course I don’t. But it’s done, Jude. A fait accompli.”

She pushed his arm away. “Great parenting, Miles. Do nothing. What if we’d found out he was doing heroin?”

“It’s not heroin, Jude,” he said tiredly.

“No. It’s love. Or so he thinks.”

“It is love, Jude. You can tell that by looking at the kid.”

“Oh, for God’s sake.”

“I’m not going to have this debate with you. If you want to throw yourself on the sword, go ahead, but don’t expect me to suture you up when you start bleeding.”

“But—”

“Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. He was in a jewelry store, shopping for a present for his girlfriend, and he got swept away by romance. That’s all. It happens to men, too, unevolved as we are.” He pulled her toward him. “Sadly, our son is an idiot. They should have told us this when he was born. That way we could have lowered our expectations.”

“Don’t you dare make me smile. I’m pissed at him.”

“It’s Christmas,” he said. “Our last one with them living at home.”

“Low blow.”

She let him put his arms around her. “Let’s not ruin this, okay?”

“JoJo, the idiot boy, promises to marry a girl—”

“Someday—”

“—and I’m the one who is endangering Christmas.”

“Zach and Lexi are not going to school together, Jude. Stop worrying. This is nothing. I promise you.”

“Fine,” she finally said. “I will keep my opinion to myself.”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling indulgently. “And you’re so good at that.”

Jude sighed. “I’ll try. But I’ll tell you this, Miles. They better go to separate schools.”

Moving with an uncustomary stiffness, Jude went back into the great room and returned to her place at the end of the table. Miles held out her chair for her and squeezed her shoulder as she sat down.

The mood had changed. There was no mistaking the sudden quiet. Mia and Zach were both looking at her with the wariness of the guilty.

She managed a tight smile and said, “Don’t you just love it when it snows for Christmas?”

Someone answered—honestly, she barely knew who it was. Perhaps her mother, saying something about the weather.

Jude’s hands were trembling just a little, and if she were a woman who had to worry about her blood pressure, she would have worried now. She understood suddenly why so many of her friends had warned her about the stresses of senior year. It was only December, and already their lives felt out of kilter, as if the warm water that had always buoyed them up had abruptly begun to drain away. There was danger in shallow water, unseen shoals. Like love and parties and children who lied to you.

“I need to return that pink sweater,” Mia said at one point. “It’s way too big. I want to get something to wear to Timmy’s party on Saturday. You want to come to the mall with me, Mom?”

Jude looked up. “Timmy’s party?”

“It’s on Saturday, remember?” Mia said.

“You two are not going to a party on Saturday,” Jude said, stunned that they would even think to ask.

Zach looked up sharply. “You said we could go.”

“That was before you called me, drunk, at one-twenty to come pick you up.”

“You said we should call you,” Zach said. “I knew we’d get into trouble for it.”

“You let them go to a party?” her mother said, her carefully arched eyebrows raised. “With alcohol?”

Jude drew a deep breath and exhaled it to stay calm. The last thing she needed now was parenting advice from a woman who’d handled motherhood as if it were radioactive waste. “You did the right thing by calling. I’m glad you did. But you also got drunk, and that’s the wrong thing. We’ve talked about this.”