The Cousins(45)
Allison hung up the phone and immediately started pacing her bedroom in a haze of mortification. Can’t get enough of those alien invasions? What was wrong with her? But then again, it hardly mattered what she said or didn’t say. Matt hadn’t returned her two previous messages, so he’d probably delete this one without even listening. It was time to face facts: what she’d considered a romantic, possibly life-changing (or at least summer-changing) night on the beach at Rob Valentine’s party was just a one-night stand.
Matt Ryan was blowing her off.
She’d only seen him once in the three weeks since Rob’s party, when he was delivering flowers to Donald Camden’s waterfront office. Allison had actually followed him inside, rehearsing the Oh, I was just dropping something off from my mother excuse she’d use when he noticed her. But Kayla Dugas, who was working that summer as part of the office’s cleaning crew, got to Matt first. “Hey, stranger,” she called, pushing her mop toward him with a little shimmy that made Matt laugh. Even in a shapeless blue smock and plastic gloves, Kayla looked gorgeous. Allison ducked behind a pillar, but she might as well have been invisible. Neither of them took their eyes off one another, and Allison ended up slinking right back outside.
She’d told herself all kinds of stories to explain Matt’s silence. He’s playing it cool. He’s worried about what his mother will say. He’s intimidated by my family. But too much time had passed for any of those to be true.
Which sucked, but wasn’t even close to her biggest problem right now.
Allison’s room suddenly felt too small and too lonely. She stepped into the hallway, listening for signs of life in Catmint House. Her brothers were on the beach, an invitation she declined because she’d wanted to be alone while she called Matt. On the off chance that he would pick up, which seemed ridiculous now.
Mother had to be around somewhere. She barely left the house anymore.
Allison padded downstairs and, sure enough, her mother was seated at the window table in the kitchen, poring over home design catalogs. She’d recently redone the backsplash behind the Viking double stove with hand-painted tiles from Italy, then decided they were too “showy” and needed to be replaced with something else. “Allison, what do you think of these?” she asked, turning the catalog face out as Allison approached the table.
Allison gazed down at a page’s worth of unremarkable white tiles. “You’re going to break Theresa’s heart, you know,” she said. Theresa had recommended the Italian tiles, and Allison happened to agree with her that they were stunning—little works of art that brought color and vibrancy to the kitchen. But Mother needed a distraction that didn’t require her to leave the house, and she’d chosen redecorating.
“Well, Theresa doesn’t live here, does she?” Mother asked, taking the catalog back.
“Actually, she does,” Allison reminded her. And then, because she was at that point of unrequited crushdom that she’d take any excuse to mention his name, she added, “Matt must be lonely without her.”
“Boys that age don’t miss their mothers,” Mother said. “Or listen to them. That’s a universal truth I know all too well.” Her voice hardened as she turned a page in the catalog. “Anders is seeing that girl again, isn’t he?”
“What girl?” Allison asked, even though she knew perfectly well that her mother meant Kayla. And Mother was right; despite whatever Kayla might have going on with Matt, she had fallen right back into old patterns with Anders.
Mother’s lips thinned as she flipped pages faster. “He’s getting too old for this nonsense. There are so many wonderful girls at Harvard, the kind he could build a real future with. Your father and I were engaged by the time we were sophomores.”
Allison would have laughed if her mother hadn’t looked so serious. “Anders is nineteen, Mother. He’s not thinking about marriage.”
“I guarantee you she is,” Mother sniffed. “He’d better watch out if he doesn’t want to find himself trapped.”
The conversation was becoming uncomfortable on too many levels. “I’m going to see if the boys are back,” Allison said, getting to her feet.
“I expect you all home for dinner tonight,” Mother said without looking up from the catalog.
“We will be,” Allison promised.
She hurried out of the kitchen, down the hallway that led to the foyer, and nearly bumped into Theresa, who was accepting a delivery at the front door.
“Hi,” Allison gulped, pasting on a smile. God, she hoped Theresa hadn’t heard any of that kitchen conversation.
But Theresa just smiled distractedly. “Hi, Allison. Right over there,” she told the delivery man, who wheeled his dolly containing a large, rectangular cardboard box into the foyer. “New sculpture,” she added as an aside to Allison. “Another bronze.”
“Ah.” Enough said. Allison’s mother was having a bronze moment lately, and each sculpture was uglier than the next. It was heroic, really, that Theresa managed to keep a straight face when talking about them. “Have you seen the boys?”
“Driveway,” Theresa said, pointing to the still-open door. Adam’s cherry-red BMW convertible was visible through the frame. “I think they’re headed downtown.”