working in the kitchen. On the contrary, if he could get Leigh and his mother to go in the next room, the cleaning job would be downright peaceful.
Instead, his mother and sister were harping at him. Faith and her cousins were all upstairs doing homework. Nick was seriously willing to consider some night courses if it got him out of this customary, tag-team browbeating.
“I’m not saying that I have an opinion on her hair,” Leigh explained defensively.
“Well, I do.” Their mother shoved a baking sheet into a cabinet with a metallic clatter. “And I hate it.”
“My point,” Leigh continued, “was simply that the hair is a first step. She did it without your permission, Nicky. The next thing you know, it escalates. Getting her ears pierced without asking first.”
“She already has pierced ears,” Nick pointed out, not that either of the females he was related to listened. He’d agreed to let Faith have her ears pierced as her birthday gift for her tenth birthday. How could it seem like such a long time ago and yet also feel just like yesterday? Having a child seriously messed with the time-space continuum.
“Tattoos!” Leigh was saying. Apparently her parenting credo was “Today, Short Hair—Tomorrow, a Belly Ring and a Boyfriend Named Viper.”
Nick banged a pot down on the counter, effectively catching both women’s attention. “Knock it off,” he said when he was certain they were listening. “For starters, Faith is scared of needles, so I think we can rule out tattoos.” She’d gone so pale after her ear piercings that he’d worried she would pass out. Although, even if she did come home with a nose or belly-button ring, it wasn’t as though he’d love her less.
“I’m proud of Faith,” he said. “My biggest overall complaint about her behavior, quite frankly, is her tendency to overreact. And now I’m thinking she gets that from us, the adults in her life. Leigh, you might as well be running in circles shouting, ‘The sky is falling.’”
His big sister sniffed. “That’s a hell of a way for you to talk to me in my own home!”
“I doubt you would have taken it any better in anyone else’s home,” he said. “You have got to get a hobby, take up meditation, find some way to relax. Along the way, you seem to have forgotten how to breathe.”
Leigh narrowed her eyes. “I breathe just fine, thanks.”
Rather than get sucked into an intense argument about how easygoing his sister was, he turned to Gwendolyn. “And you! Your biggest goal in life seems to be keeping Faith away from Pam, but by demonizing her mother, you’re not only potentially harming Faith, you’re making her more curious and rebellious. When I talked to Pam about it—”
“You spoke to her?” Gwendolyn demanded. “Recently?”
“Two days ago. She came over for lunch. She loved your soup by the way.”
Gwendolyn, a normally dignified woman who disliked anyone making a scene, looked nearly apoplectic. “I knew this would happen, I knew it! You’ve never been able to stay away from that woman, and this time is no different. Didn’t I warn you?”
Nice to see they’d taken his comment about not overreacting to heart. “It was just a quick lunch to talk about Faith, figure out a parenting strategy.”
“She is not Faith’s parent,” Gwendolyn said in a low, dangerous voice. “Pardon my crudeness, but she was an incubator! She never cared for that girl. She didn’t put bandages on scraped knees or teach her multiplication facts or sing her to sleep at night. We did all that. We’re Faith’s family! Pamela Jo Wilson is merely a bad influence. It’s as I told her in the craft store—”
“You talked to Pam?” Nick was beyond affectionately annoyed now and moving into downright pissed.
“I didn’t show up at her house in the dead of night,” Gwendolyn snapped, “I merely ran into her while shopping.”
“And were no doubt your charming self,” Nick drawled sarcastically. He recalled all the subtle digs his mother had made over the years, the times he’d had to defend his girlfriend, “the daughter of that low-class Wilson woman,” to his mother. He didn’t think Gwendolyn was technically an evil person, but she was snobby and prejudiced when it came to anything involving her children.
What bothered him, remembering those many squabbles they’d had about Pam, was the way they’d suddenly stopped. When we got married. He’d been so shaken by the discovery that he was going to be a father, had felt so guilty and dependent on his