looked up, suddenly, at the sound of a car horn. It was relentless. Obnoxious. I was halfway down a main street, walking along the same stretch of sidewalk I followed home every day, but I’d been lost in my head; I hadn’t been paying attention to the road.
There was a car waiting for me up ahead. It had pulled over to the side and whoever was driving would not stop honking at me.
I didn’t recognize the car.
My heart gave a sudden, terrifying lurch and I took a step back. The driver was waving frantically at me, and only the fact that the driver was a woman gave me pause. My instincts told me to run like hell, but I worried that maybe she needed help. Maybe she’d run out of gas? Maybe she needed to borrow a cell phone?
I stepped cautiously toward her. She leaned out of her car window.
“Wow,” she said, and laughed. “It’s really hard to get your attention.”
She was a pretty, older blond lady. Her eyes seemed friendly enough, and my pulse slowed its stutter.
“Are you okay?” I asked. “Did your car break down?”
She smiled. Looked curiously at me. “I’m Ocean’s mom,” she said. “My name is Linda. You’re Shirin, right?”
Oh, I thought. Shit shit shit.
Oh shit.
I blinked at her. My heart was beating a staccato.
“Would you like to go for a ride?”
29
Twenty-Nine
“Listen,” she said, “I want to get this out of the way right upfront.” She glanced at me as she drove. “I don’t care about the differences in your backgrounds. That’s not why I’m here.”
“Okay,” I said slowly.
“But your relationship is causing Ocean a real problem right now, and I’d be an irresponsible mother if I didn’t try to make it stop.”
I almost laughed out loud. I didn’t think this was the thing that would turn her into an irresponsible mother, I wanted to say.
Instead, I said, “I don’t understand why everyone is having this conversation with me. If you don’t want your son to spend time with me, maybe you should be talking to him.”
“I tried,” she said. “He won’t listen to me. He’s not listening to anyone.” She glanced in my direction again. I suddenly realized I had no idea where we were going. “I was hoping,” she said, “that you would be more reasonable.”
“That’s because you don’t know me,” I said to her. “Ocean is the reasonable one in the relationship.”
She actually cracked a smile. “I’m not going to waste your time, I promise. I can tell that my son genuinely likes you. I don’t want to hurt him—or you, for that matter—but there are just things you don’t know.”
“Things like what?”
“Well,” she said, and took a deep breath, “things like—I’ve always relied on Ocean getting a basketball scholarship.” And then she looked at me, looked at me for so long I worried we’d crash into something. “I can’t risk him getting kicked off the team.”
I frowned. “Ocean told me he didn’t need a scholarship. He said that you had money set aside for him, for college.”
“I don’t.”
“What?” I stared at her. “Why not?”
“That’s really none of your business,” she said.
“Does Ocean know about this?” I said. “That you spent all his money for college?”
She flushed, unexpectedly, and for the first time, I saw something mean in her eyes. “First of all,” she said, “it’s not his money. It’s my money. I am the adult in our household, and for as long as he lives under my roof, I get to choose how we live. And second of all”—she hesitated—“my personal affairs are not up for discussion.”
I was floored.
I said, “Why would you lie about something like that? Why wouldn’t you just tell him that he has no money for college?”
Her cheeks had gone a blotchy, unflattering red, and her jaw was so tight I really thought she might snap and start screaming at me. Instead, she said, very stiffly, “Our relationship is strained enough as it is. I didn’t see the point in making things worse.” And then she pulled to a sudden stop.
We were in front of my house.
“How do you know where I live?” I said, stunned.
“It wasn’t hard to find out.” She put the car in park. Turned in her seat to face me. “If you get him kicked off the team,” she said, “he won’t be able to go to a good school. Do you understand that?” She was looking me full in the face now, and it was suddenly hard to be brave. Her eyes were