Well Suited (Red Lipstick Coalition #4)(52)

“Hope,” Katherine said again. “I like that one.”

“Me too. It’s sweet for a little girl, but she could have a professional adult job and it’s classic enough to work.” I loaded my fork. “What do you think she’ll do?”

Katherine made a face at me. “That’s an impossible question. We don’t even know what kind of disposition she’ll have.”

“Well, we could assume she’ll be like us in some sense.”

“That isn’t a safe assumption. I’m nothing like my parents.”

It was the second mention in a handful of minutes, which led me to believe it was safe to ask, “What are they like?”

Another look, this one flat. “My mother changed her name to Sparrow. I’m sure you can imagine what kind of mom she was.”

I chuckled. “So, she’s an accountant?”

She frowned. “No, I’m not even sure she can do math without a calculator. She’s a yoga instructor.”

“It was a joke, Kate. What brand of hippie is she? Weed and conspiracy theories or vegan and reiki?”

“Vegan and reiki. She actually thinks dream catchers catch dreams.”

A laugh shot out of me.

“I mean it,” she said. “She psychically cleans them on Saturdays.”

“That’s…”

“I love her, but she drives me crazy. We are exact opposites.”

“How so?”

She set down her fork and folded her arms on the table in front of her. Her face was touched with both amusement and annoyance. “For my thirteenth birthday, all I wanted was a gift card to a bookstore. That was it. I explicitly requested that, a vanilla cake with strawberry icing, and no party. But she didn’t listen—she never does. Instead, she deemed the occasion too momentous to let pass without a hoorah. So, she showed up at school during lunch, floated into the cafeteria with balloons and chocolate cupcakes, and sang ‘Happy Birthday’ in front of all my peers. I thought I was going to melt into the floor and die.”

I laughed, only because it was so outrageous. “It’s like she didn’t know you at all.”

“Doesn’t. Doesn’t know me and doesn’t listen when I tell her who I am or what I want. That night, she threw me a surprise party with a bunch of kids from school I didn’t even know. I think all their mothers made them come, maybe with bribery. I can’t imagine why else they would have shown up.” She sighed and picked up her fork again. “It’s classic Sparrow—I ask her for something, and she not only ignores my request, but goes in the complete opposite direction. I think it’s her own method of control, an effort to fix me, prove to me that there’s a better, happier way to live, if only I’d give it a whirl. That rationalization helps me endure, coupled with the knowledge that she means well. But I’m glad there are several thousand miles of distance between us. She has boundary issues but square miles help.”

“I’m guessing she wasn’t bent to find out you’re pregnant when you didn’t have a boyfriend.”

She shrugged, her attention on her food. “I haven’t told her yet.”

I stilled. “You haven’t told your mom you’re pregnant?”

“She’s been on a spirit journey in Washington for the last two months, and I didn’t want to tell her until we were out of the first trimester.”

I hadn’t moved. “A spirit journey.”

“A spirit journey.” She didn’t elaborate. She had more important things to attend to, like her pasta.

“Where did you say you grew up?”

“Sedona—land of a thousand psychics. My kindergarten teacher read tarot cards for us during recess and didn’t believe in the word no.”

Ten pieces of the Katherine puzzle snapped into place at the admission.

My straight, serious Katherine had grown up in fucking Sedona to hippie New Age parents who believed in magic. It was no wonder she craved bounds and rules and order. I wondered how in the hell Sparrow Lawson had handled having a daughter like Katherine.

“How about your dad?”

“His name is Dave, and he’s the lead singer of an Eagles cover band.”

“Please tell me he has a ponytail.”

“Of course he does. How could he not? It’s the color of graphite, and he doesn’t use a ponytail holder—he keeps it in a leather cuff.”

A laugh burst out of me.

“You’re surprised. Everyone is surprised.”

“I expected them to be scientists or mathematicians or professors. Intellectuals.”

“I wonder sometimes if they had been, if I’d have ended up their opposite. Whatever genetics they passed on to me were not applicable to them, and their attempts to nurture me into a spiritual being didn’t stick. For a long time, I thought I was adopted. If there’d been such thing as Photoshop and if my parents knew how to use computers, I’d have convinced myself they fabricated the photos of my mom in the hospital with me. I even had a fantasy about being switched with another baby in the hospital.”

“You wanted to find reason where there was none. Sounds nothing like you,” I joked.

“I couldn’t ever understand how it was possible. I had no rules. None. And it was so dire, I ended up making rules of my own, not only for myself, but for them. We had a chore chart hanging on the fridge, but it wasn’t to motivate me. It was to motivate them, with little gold stars and extra allowance for their favorite mystic shop. Nothing motivated my mother to do the dishes like the prospect of buying more crystals.”