right through me. Always had. I had to change the subject...and fast.
I wasn’t about to confess my failure to stay married. Not now. Maybe not ever.
“Let’s talk about you. You sleeping? Eating?” Genius. I could match her interrogation skills question for question.
She nodded. “There was an incident at church.”
I hesitated before I asked the obvious question. “Like what?” What sort of incident could happen at church? Seriously?
She answered without meeting my gaze. “I punched an usher.”
I blinked. “Pardon me?”
“Punched an usher.” My mother gave a shrug of her slender shoulders as if her statement should come as no surprise. “Split his lip.” She blinked. “He got a bit too close when he passed the collection basket.” She gave another shrug. “I may have overreacted.”
“You think?”
Apparently the insanity was genetic. And here I thought I’d merely lived in New Jersey for too long.
I bit my lip and tried very hard not to snicker, but come on. The visual was priceless. It seemed we Carrolls threw decorum to the wind under stress.
“Split his lip?” I repeated.
She nodded, then let out a quick sigh.
“Boy, too bad Dad missed that.” I said the words without thinking, without stopping to realize Dad was the reason my mother had slugged the poor usher to begin with.
As much as I missed Dad, I couldn’t begin to imagine how lost my mother felt.
Her eyes filled with tears. I gathered the paperwork into a single pile and set my yellow tablet on top of the various forms and notes. “Why don’t I take this home?”
She nodded, not speaking, probably not wanting me to hear her voice crack or wobble.
“How about a walk?” I asked. “The fresh air might do us both good.”
Mom nodded again and I pushed back my chair, heading toward the closet to grab our jackets. A few minutes later, we walked in silence, eyes squinting against the bright afternoon sun.
“You should ask Ryan to help with the paperwork,” Mom said. “He’s very good with things like that.”
“We’ll see,” I said. Not a chance, I thought.
My mother snapped her tongue. “It’s too much for you to handle alone.”
This was the perfect time to tell her about Ryan, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to do it. She loved Ryan. Loved him.
Why shatter her illusions by telling her he’d not only lined up his rebound relationship, but had moved right ahead to his rebound offspring?
We walked in silence from that point on, soaking in the warm sun and crisp autumn air. I kicked haphazardly at the piles of orange and red leaves gathered along the sidewalk in front of the neat, suburban houses.
It spoke volumes about our relationship that even at a time when I knew we’d both like to scream and cry or rant and rave, we remained calm, quiet, controlled, numb.
A better daughter might have known what to say or how to act, but I didn’t have a clue. I said nothing. I did nothing.
When we stepped back inside my mom’s house, I headed for the kitchen. “I’m going to grab this paperwork and go, Mom. Maybe I can get ahead of rush hour traffic.”
“Oh.” A note of surprise sounded in her voice.
“What?” I turned to look at her as she studied herself in the hall mirror. “I can stay, if you’d rather--”
“My earring’s gone.” My mother’s voice dropped to barely more than a whisper. She slipped the remaining earring off and cradled it in the palm of one hand. “Your father gave me these. Before we were married.”
Damn.
“I’ll find it.” I slapped the paperwork down on the table and flipped on the overhead hallway light. “I’m good at finding things. Really. Just ask Ry...anyone.”
We searched for several minutes in the hall, next to the closet, under furniture. We searched every inch of her windbreaker before I made her untuck her sweater and shake that out as well.
We found nothing. Not a blessed thing.
“It has to be here somewhere.” I couldn’t deny a tiny bit of panic squeezed at my insides even as I did my best to sound confident.
Mom shot me a weak smile. “It’s okay.”
I’d never seen her look so...lost. I yanked open the front door. “I’ll find it.”
The breeze had picked up and the sun had dipped lower in the late afternoon sky.
“You’ll catch a chill.” She placed a hand on my shoulder. “Let it go, honey.”
But I couldn’t let it go. Not now. I might not know what to say to ease her heartache, but I could find her earring. “I’ll be