did, if her body language was anything to go by. She was staring at her phone, but her fingers weren’t moving.
My mother turned to me, face serious. “I really do. You can tell me anything, you know. I won’t judge you.”
I hadn’t known. Once upon a time, I had told her almost everything. It would be good to talk things over with her. Would it be possible for me to do so without telling her everything?
We’d inched our way forward, one transaction at a time.
The gaunt grey-haired postal worker greeted my mother by name as we finally reached the counter. “Hey, Maureen.”
“Hi, Chester. How’re things?”
“Can’t complain,” he answered. “What do you have for me today?”
“I need a book of stamps and to mail this.” She pulled a small package out of her purse.
Chester’s eyes flicked over to me. “Who’s your friend?”
My mother smiled. “My son, Jake.”
Chester’s eyes widened. “No kidding? Finally came back?”
“That’s me,” I said, giving him a tight grin. “I’m just visiting.”
His grunt told me how he felt about that. “What kind of stamps do you want?” he asked my mother, obviously done with me.
“What have you got today?” she asked.
While my mother and Chester pawed through sheets of stamps with either pictures of flowers, heads of state, contemporary artists, or endangered animals on them, I studied the FBI’s most wanted posters on the wall, wondering if I’d see any familiar faces. I hadn’t realized those were still in use.
My mother finally decided on saving the whales or whichever animal was endangered at the moment, much to the relief of everyone behind us in line, I was sure.
Inside the relative safety of the car, I flipped the sweatshirt hood down. “Do you go to the post office enough to be on first-name basis with the workers?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” my mother said, backing neatly out of the parking spot. “Chester is on the historical preservation committee. We met after I bought the house.”
The next stop was the bank. There would be too many cameras inside for me to feel comfortable going in, so I convinced my mother to leave me in the car. She grudgingly agreed, making sure to take the keys with her.
“I’m not going to drive away and strand you, Mother,” I said.
“You’ve done it before,” she said. “And stop calling me mother. It’s weird. Like that summer you watched too much BBC.”
“Fine,” I said. “And I didn’t run away,” I said to her retreating back. “Bob kicked me out for being gay.”
My mother stopped and turned. A complex series of emotions crossed her face too fast for me to read. “Is that what you think?” She asked, hands on her hips.
“I was there, Mom. Believe me, I remember it really well.”
She opened her mouth, pointed a finger at me, and then closed her mouth. The anger faded from her face and she crossed her arms over her chest. “We’re going to talk after I get finished.”
I briefly contemplated making a run for it, but there was no point in putting off this conversation. Besides, I was curious as to how she was going to spin the events to somehow make Bob not a bad guy.
Since I had nothing better to do, I made a group call to the boys with the secure app Wesley had supplied for us. The coms were great, but only worked over a limited range. “Neo? Big Daddy? Anyone around?”
“We all are, Chaney,” Leo said. “Rusty, Thing Two, and I are at home base.”
“Neo and I are at the house,” Danny said. “I’m going to the rink soon. I don’t know where Spidey and Ducky are. I think they said they were going shopping.” Spidey was Ridge, for his ability to scale building and Ducky was Davis. Scrooge McDuck had been unanimously approved but was too unwieldly to use in conversation. Even though the app was theoretically secure, we tried to stick to call signs any time we weren’t in private and in person.
“Thought we were meeting up this morning,” Leo said. “I take it you got unavoidably detained.”
“And by that we mean your momma caught you doing the walk of shame after a night of hot monkey sex,” Steele said.
“How did you know about that?”
“Tell us all about,” Breck said. “Give me the details.”
“You’re just going to have to use your imagination,” I said. “I’m checking in. Anything new I should know?”
“Nothing from Spiderwoman,” Leo said. Spiderwoman was Miranda’s call sign. I hoped she didn’t know about it, but I