New York?” Mom had stopped frosting, and I laid down my spatula too, taking a sip of water as my mind spun.
“There were a lot of good things. Like every kind of take-out you could possibly want.”
Mom’s lips formed into a thin line, but she said nothing, so I continued. Mom didn’t seem swayed by the take-out options.
“And the energy. There was always something going on, always something to do. The people there were very cosmopolitan—no food in buckets.”
“So your dislike of your hometown has to do with The Shack?”
I shook my head, scrambling for other examples. “No, it was just one example, Mom.”
“You haven’t mentioned friends, people.”
“I have friends there,” I said, feeling defensive. “But you know, everyone there is very busy. We all have lives. Jobs.”
“It sounds horribly lonely, Addie.”
For some stupid reason, my mind flashed to the house, to dinners with Daniel and Michael, to the movie nights we used to have before I screwed everything up. “Well, it wasn’t. I was too busy to be lonely.”
“And too busy to notice that your relationship wasn’t working.”
Pain sliced through me and I let my eyes slam shut for an instant, trying to absorb it. Mom was right. “That’s not fair. And that’s not a nice thing to say.”
Mom sighed and turned back to the frosting. “I’m your mother, Addie, not your friend. It’s my job to say the things you don’t want to hear.”
I had nothing to say to that because I was still reeling that my own mother would poke her finger in a wound as raw as my relationship with Luke. The worst thing was, I knew she was right.
“The other thing I’ll say is that since you’ve been here, you have seemed increasingly happy. But since I didn’t see you for years before you came home, I don’t have a lot to compare it to.”
Another jab.
We frosted in silence for a little while, and then Mom stuck her spatula into the bowl and declared us done. “Is the kitchen finished yet at the house?” She asked as I gathered my bag and got ready to head back up the hill. The house had felt like a refuge at one point, and I missed feeling like I fit there. Now it was just one more place filled with awkward silences, one more place I didn’t belong.
“Should be done tomorrow,” I told her. The appliances were being delivered, and that would be it.
“Then we’ll do Sunday dinner at your house this week,” she announced in a tone that brooked no argument.
“Um. Okay,” I said, wondering if that would be okay with Michael. In some ways it would be nice to show off all the work we’d been doing. And it would be more people to fill in the awkward silences between me and Michael. “I’ll just check with Michael, I guess.”
“It’s your house too. You tell him this is a Tanner tradition. If he doesn’t like it, he can get lost.”
“Mom, it’s his house.”
“And yours. By the way, his rude uncle Victor should probably be invited too.”
“If he’s rude, why do you want him there?”
“Aren’t we making amends?”
I shook my head. “Not that I was aware of. Last time we talked about it, you were planning some sort of frosting assault on the bookstore windows.”
“I think I’m a bigger person than that.” Mom refused to meet my eyes.
“Since when?” I stared at my mother. She was hiding something, and I was very curious about what exactly it was.
“Just plan dinner, Addie. I’ll bring a roast. We’ll be there at six.”
“Um. Okay.” With that strange conversation echoing in my mind, I trudged up the hill toward the house. The yard had been trimmed and cleared, and with all the new windows gleaming with light from inside the house, it looked much less creepy and haunted than it used to. I slipped inside the gates, which we now left open most of the time, and took the path around the house to the kitchen door.
I let myself in with my key, and stopped for a moment to admire the new, modern kitchen we’d installed. The countertops were a light milky quartz and the angled glass subway tiles of the backsplash gave a nice contrast in a gleaming green. The gas grill had been built under a copper hood, and the cabinets were all painted a very dark forest green that looked almost black in certain light. The wide plank tile flooring set it all off perfectly, and the new