Bliss and the Art of Forever - Alison Kent Page 0,38
his life. Lena could set up for the day and handle things at Bliss till he got there. “I hadn’t planned to. This just came up.”
“This being . . .”
How was he supposed to explain Brooklyn Harvey to his mother when he couldn’t explain her to himself?
He’d prefer his mother not know he’d done more than meet Ms. Harvey when he’d visited her class last week. Of course, since he hadn’t thought to tell his daughter not to share the details of today’s outing, his mother would no doubt know everything about the park and the bookstore and the ice cream before Addy got around to brushing her teeth.
Ah, well. “Saturday wiped me out of product. I’d like to get in a few trays to have ready for the morning. And I got an idea for a new filling when Addy and I were at the park today. It may get . . . complicated, working out the flavor.”
“And you couldn’t cook it up in your kitchen at home?” she asked, the sink water sloshing as she worked her way through the silverware, washing everything before loading the dishwasher. “Or here?”
He could have. He didn’t want to. He needed to think and to pace and to blast the Killers over Bliss’s speakers instead of the licensed jazz that usually played. “I don’t have all the ingredients I’m going to need at home. Or here. I can take Addy with me—”
“So she can stay up too late and sleep on the couch in your office and be miserable tomorrow at school?” His mother shook her head, yanking at the faucet’s sprayer head to squirt down the now empty sink. “No. She’ll be better off here.”
And . . . here we go. “Hang on a sec,” he said, grabbing on to the back of the closest chair and leaning into it. “I know you didn’t just say that.”
“Oh, you know what I mean,” she said, dismissing him with the wave of one hand, while wiping down the countertop with the other.
What she meant was he was still making bad choices, working overnight instead of spending time with his girl. “You didn’t tell me how pretty Addy’s teacher is.”
“Is she?” she asked, though the question, lacking a single bit of inflection, could just as easily have been an offhanded remark.
He worked his jaw. There were so many things he wanted to say. So many things he shouldn’t. “Surely you’ve noticed. You were there for Halloween, for Christmas. For who knows what else. You know, events I would’ve gone to had I known about them. Funny how the notes disappeared out of Addy’s backpack. I’m actually kinda surprised you didn’t sign yourself up for story hour.”
“Don’t be silly, Callum.” She was done with the sink and the countertop now, and had found a different cleaner to use on the stove. “It was a story hour for fathers. I’m not Adrianne’s father.”
Rubbing a hand over his forehead did nothing but spread out his headache. “Not being her parents didn’t stop you and Dad from going with her to parents’ night.”
She paused in her scrubbing, just long enough for Callum to notice, though she kept her head down, her eyes on her sponge as she asked, “Did Ms. Harvey tell you that?”
“Actually no. I remember Addy mentioning that you’d gone. I told myself then that I needed to pay better attention to her schedule.”
Pursing her lips, she went back to the cleaning that seemed to be the only thing at the moment that mattered. “You can log in and see it all online.”
Oh, well, that would’ve been nice to know. “Give me the URL and user name. I’ll take a look.”
“Your father has that saved on his laptop.” Finished with her scrubbing, she pulled off her gloves, draping them over a rod inside the cabinet door beneath the sink. “There’s a parent-teacher conference coming up in just over a month.”
But no date, time, day of the week. He supposed he should be thankful she’d offered that much. Getting anything else out of her, and especially getting what he wanted—an apology, or an acknowledgment that she’d overstepped her bounds—was a fool’s errand. “Is Dad busy?”
“He’s in his study,” she said with a distracted wave of one arm, having moved to the pantry for the broom. “Talking back to his TV.”
“Thanks.” Callum made his way from the kitchen through the dining room to his father’s domain. He might never have lived in this particular house, though he’d lived