She began to shake her head. “This can’t be happening, Max. It can’t. This is a freaking disaster!” She shook her hands as if she’d burned them, trying to shake this off. She tried to see around Max, certain her mother would come barreling out that door at any moment. “What are the odds?” She lunged for him, grabbed his shirt in both fists, and shook him. “What are the odds?”
“I would say infinite.” He covered her hands with his and gently pried them from their grip of his shirt.
“What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know how long or how serious—”
“Oh God,” Carly said, and slapped a hand to her forehead. “Oh my God.”
“What?”
“It’s serious, Max!” She was almost levitating with anxiety. “That’s why I’m here! Because my mother very casually announced to me a couple of days ago that she and some guy were going to run off to Vegas to get married!”
“What?” Max looked back at the house. He suddenly grabbed Carly’s elbow and marched her out to the drive, away from the house and any ears. “What did you just say? Why didn’t you tell me? Seems like something you might have mentioned when you were telling me about your family.”
“Because you don’t know her, and, honestly, my mother says crazy things all the time. She’s a little out there.” She covered her face with her hands. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Fuck.” Max groaned. He looked back at the door.
“We have to make them promise they won’t,” Carly said. “That’s the best thing to do, isn’t it? We just go in there and tell them this isn’t happening, and—”
“We can’t,” Max said. “Jamie is in there and he’s already met your mother. I can’t do anything to cause a scene and set him off. We need to think about this.”
Carly could feel the blood draining from her. “My mother has met your brother?”
“Apparently,” he said. “We need to talk to them about this . . . but preferably away from Jamie and this house.”
“What are we going to do, just sit there and act like everything is okay?” she asked, gesturing wildly to the house, bouncing up and down on her toes in distress. “This can’t happen, Max! I mean for so many reasons, right? Right?”
“I know, babe,” he said softly, and squeezed her shoulder.
Shoulder squeeze notwithstanding, he did not sound confident. How could he be? This was insane, and of course it would happen just when this relationship between her and Max had started. This really wonderful relationship that was so good and pure and so full of hope and wonder. The real deal. The falling in love. All of it. Her mother really had a knack for ruining everything. “What are we going to do?”
He rubbed the stubble on his chin as he thought for several long moments, then announced, “I got nothing.”
“How can you have nothing? You’re a scientist!”
“You can’t expect me to know what to do about this,” he said. “I study the brain, not the heart, and besides, it is my father, and I had no idea, and I am a little freaked out right now!”
“This is a disaster—”
Max took her hands in his before she corkscrewed herself right into the ground. “Okay, take a breath. How about this—we get through this evening and see how much we can learn about their plans. Let’s see how serious it really is. Then we’ll figure out what to do next.”
“But . . .” Carly wanted to ask what happened if this was really serious between their parents. But she couldn’t even bring herself to ask because the answer, whatever it was, would be devastating.
Max seemed to understand. He glanced over his shoulder, then put his arm around her and kissed her quickly. “We’ll figure it out. But let’s just get through tonight and then see what’s up.”
There really was no other option at that moment, and Carly couldn’t deny she wanted to know what was up with those two. She nodded. “Okay.”
“Ready?”
“No! But let’s go,” she said. She pulled a bottle of wine from her tote bag and hitched it under her arm, then walked with Max to the door.
Max led her inside, and she walked past dated furniture, through a living room where the drapes had been pulled closed, and into the kitchen. There was her mother, bustling around as if she already lived there. Her mother looked up and smiled. “Ah, there