sad smile that looked neither sad nor smiling. "He did not tell you I see by the wrinkle just here." Nicola touched the smooth spot between her own thirty-year-old eyes. "Men… are they not small boys? But he has taken you in, for a price, has he not? And you have no finances. This is right? And no… I must be honest, ability." Nicola shook her head. "Shame."
Shame. Is that what she felt? It could be in there along with embarrassment, anger, and maybe heartbreaking pain all wadded up in the world’s largest ball of stupidity residing at her core. She felt a shiver run through her.
"Ah, but you are cold, and I am off now." Nicola sighed. "He will come to his senses speedy enough, no?"
No, he wouldn’t. He never had. He never would. And obviously she hadn’t come to her senses speedy enough to avoid that lesson again.
Missy drove them towards town, and Gwen tried to imagine she was alone without a daughter beside her, a mother in the back seat, and barely enough money for the cheap hotel they were headed for. Missy had turned down the radio but the pop station seemed to specialize in women panting over unintelligible lyrics, and it wasn’t filling the silent gaps enough.
They would ask her soon, any minute, why the hell she’d dragged them out of Max’s. They couldn’t be ignored for long, but maybe they could be distracted for another minute. She turned to face the front windshield, the signs bright in the night as they lined the blocks ahead. "So, Missy, you’re driving grandma home tomorrow."
"Yeah."
"Glad your medical adventure’s over, Mom?"
Missy’s eyes darted to the rear view mirror, and Gwen swiveled to catch Ellen’s answering look. "What?"
"Gwennie, what happened with Max? He didn’t understand why we were leaving either and such a nice meal we had."
Clearly she’d learned her distraction trick from her mother, but she’d done it first this time, so Ellen had to be the one to answer. "What’s going on, you two? I saw the look. Missy, your grandmother practically invented the look. I grew up with it, and I know it means withholding information."
Ellen gave a hint of a smile. "It was my mother who invented the look." Nostalgia, Gwen thought, but the good kind. "I’m just second generation."
"You’re doing the distraction thing again, Mom. What’s going on?"
Missy stopped at a red light and turned to her, and Gwen felt a pulse of panic. "Grandma has osteoporosis."
"Early days, early days." Ellen waved her hand in dismissal. "I refuse to have that humpy back. Surely there are fashion tricks to camouflage it if it comes in real bad, like stripes. Horizontal, do you suppose?"
Gwen tried to remember what she knew about osteoporosis beyond breaking a hip, and it seemed like there were some potentially serious health issues. "Mom, when you get home I want you to see your doctor and check on medications, exercise, maybe some physical therapy." She saw the look again and busted them in the rear view mirror. "Tell me."
Ellen sighed like a long suffering teenager, and Gwen wondered if Missy had learned that generationally as well. "I don’t have any insurance."
"You certainly do."
"I did, Gwennie, but to be fair to the tool, and I’d rather not be, but he can’t take care of me anymore. I’m not even his mother-in-law, unless you patch things up with him."
Missy shook her head. "Mom, you can fix this, all of it."
She was supposed to do what? Re-snag a husband so she and her mother had someone to insure them?
But Missy kept going, clearly buying whatever story Steve had sold her. "He’s alone. He really is. And he--"
"Oh, so I should quick go catch him while he’s between girlfriends?"
She heard Missy suck in a breath. "That’s mean."
"Yeah, mean to me, and I don’t think I need to take advice from either of you." She hooked a thumb toward the backseat. "Hannah Montana’s had a stadium worth of potential husbands, and you’ve followed up Austin with Bryan, and don’t think I didn’t notice. He thinks anything female is fair game. You won’t be the only one, Missy. Your father may have walked out after twenty years, but we had twenty years. Bryan’s just like Max."
Ellen leaned into the gap between the front seats. "What about Max?"
Missy pulled into the hotel parking lot and jerked into a parking space. "You don’t know anything."
The hell she didn't. "Well, I know he’s married."
Missy looked at her like she was