Midnight Sommelier - Anne Malcom Page 0,57

have a lot of talent.”

I rolled my eyes.

“Hey, don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t discount yourself like that. You’ve got talent. You’re coming alive again. Be proud.”

I didn’t know if coming alive again was something to be proud of. Not yet.

13

“Josephine, I wasn’t expecting you—”

She cut me off by pushing past me and storming into the house. Now, Josephine had been unpleasant toward me. Cold. Indifferent. But she always obeyed the rules. Her rules. The upper crust’s rules. Manners. How to efficiently and politely insult someone.

This was something different.

It amused me.

Delighted me even.

David and I had always joked about what would cause her to finally snap. He was a relatively well-behaved teenager, so there were no underage drinking incidents or arrests. Impregnating and marrying me had been his biggest rebellion. It had boiled her blue blood to be sure, but she’d managed to grit her teeth and get through it.

There were bumps over the years, sure. Moments where I was sure she would finally let go of that veil, that mask, and be honest with me and herself.

But it didn’t come.

Not even when I lost David as my buffer. Sure, the comments got more barbed, her gaze even colder than before, but she held on to her farce of civility.

Until today.

I closed the door and followed her. “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” I asked, entering the kitchen.

She whirled on me. “I heard about what you did.” Venom saturated her tone, eyes narrowed.

My stomach dipped. Had she found out about Zeke and me? There was no way that could’ve happened.

“What are you talking about?” I asked, feigning casual curiosity.

“What you did at the Homecoming game,” she snapped.

My shoulders sagged ever so slightly with relief. So it wasn’t the fact I was screwing the ex-gang member next door—it was because I’d punched some uppity mom at a football game. That I could handle.

“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she spat, “carrying on like that. Besmirching our family name. One that has had an impeccable reputation throughout the town and Black Mountain Academy for as long as they’ve been around. What would David say?”

I stiffened. “You know, Josephine, I can handle your thinly veiled insults. Your disapproval. You thinking you’re better than me. I can handle it because you’re really not. Because money and an old name doesn’t make you better than me. Especially when you treat other people without those things as inferior. I gave you respect you didn’t give me because I was raised better. Because you are David’s mother and the only grandparent that my boys have.”

I stepped forward, happy to see her eyes flare with alarm as I did so. “But you do not come into my house slinging insults, speaking on things you have no knowledge of. Judging me when you haven’t walked a mile in my shoes. David knew exactly who I was when he married me, and I knew exactly who he was. And it’s nowhere near who you think he was.”

I looked up at the wall, at David staring back at me. Then back to his mother, who was nothing like him but had his eyes. It was cruel.

“Somehow, out of your cold, unfeeling crypt of a home, a warm, caring, loving, and exceptionally kind man emerged. A man with a sense of humor. A man who made me smile daily. Who our boys worshipped. Who I know for a fact would’ve congratulated me for punching the woman spewing ugliness about my boys. About my family. Now, I’ll agree, it wasn’t my finest hour. My parents raised me to believe that violence is not how things are solved, to be the bigger person. But you know what? I’ve had my fill of being the bigger person. With judgmental teachers. With vapid mothers addicted to Valium, and with mother-in-laws who are polished and perfumed but really just rotten and ugly inside.” I sucked in a breath, my gaze flicking up and down the woman, making sure I communicated just how lacking I found her.

“Now, as much as I would like to banish you from my home and life forever, I won’t do that. Because my boys need as many people around them who love them as possible. Because they love their grandmother. They do not see what I see, and as long as you treat them with love and respect, they never will. I will not say a word against you in their presence. But only because of David.” I picked up my