Her mom waved both hands, like she was trying to swat away a sudden swarm of gnats. “You’re being ridiculous. I’m not going to tell you again.”
“Hey!” someone called behind them. When Meg turned around, Lillian was standing at her own car across the street in front of the real estate office, her giant key ring still dangling from one hand. “You guys okay?”
“We’re great,” Meg promised, pasting a wide, please don’t ask any more questions smile on her face. “Just headed out. See you next week, yeah?”
Lillian gazed at them for a moment longer. “You sure?” she asked, a little more quietly this time. Something about the way she said it made Meg think she probably could have told her the truth. Still, the specter of a public scene—the idea of her mom losing it in front of Lillian, or worse, at her, had Meg nodding frantically.
“Yep!” she insisted, still smiling like a maniac. “Have a good night!” She walked around to the other side of the Volvo, wrenching open the driver’s door. Her mom was a person she needed to protect herself from, she realized, and as soon as she had that thought, her eyes filled with tears. “Mom,” she said, low and urgent. “Come on.”
Her mom huffed. “Fine, Meg,” she snapped, yanking the keys out of the ignition and thrusting them in Meg’s direction before unbuckling her seat belt and shoving past her onto the blacktop. “Move, then, so I can get out.” She kept one hand on the car as she made her way to the passenger side—steadying herself?—before flouncing in and slamming the door with enough force that Meg could feel it in her molars. “There,” her mom said. “Are you happy?”
“Yeah, Mom.” Meg yanked the seat belt so hard it locked before she could get it all the way around herself; she tugged again, twice more, before giving up and letting go. “I’m great.”
Back at the house, her mom got out of the car and stalked inside without saying anything. Meg stared after her for a moment, tilting her head back against the seat. Upstairs, she changed into her pajamas and curled up in bed, then picked up her phone and texted Colby. Are you around?
He called her back four minutes later. “What about ceramics?” he asked when she answered. “Ceramics is a hobby, right?”
Meg laughed, but then the laugh turned into something else halfway out and suddenly she was terrified she was going to start crying and never, ever stop. She sucked in a quick breath, but it was ragged as torn denim, and Colby heard. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” she said automatically, but the stupidity of lying to Colby was obvious as soon as she opened her mouth. “No,” she amended, and just like that the whole story was spilling out of her like wine from a knocked-over glass. He listened without saying anything, so quiet on the other end of the line that twice Meg interrupted herself to ask if he was still there.
“That sucks,” he said, when she was finally finished. “I’m really sorry.”
“Yeah,” she said, crawling under the covers with her phone jammed between her ear and her shoulder. “It totally sucks.”
“Is she an alcoholic, you think?”
“I—no,” Meg said immediately, startled by the word in the same way she’d been surprised to hear herself say drunk earlier tonight. Alcoholics were red-faced and strawberry-nosed, weren’t they? They snuck vodka out of plastic bottles they kept hidden in their coat pockets and slumped over stools in dive bars at ten o’clock in the morning.
They show up drunk to get their kids from work, a nasty voice in Meg’s head added.
She pushed it away. “She’s just still sad about my dad, that’s all,” she insisted. “And she hates her boring job, and she and my dad never really had a ton of friends. I think she just doesn’t know what to do with herself, that’s all.” Then, in a feeble attempt to muster a joke: “Maybe she needs a hobby, too.”
Colby didn’t laugh. “Okay,” he said. “You’d know better than I would.” He didn’t sound convinced, really, but the nice thing was how she didn’t actually feel like she needed to convince him. He wasn’t going to judge her either way. “Can you talk to your dad?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” Meg tucked one arm behind her head, staring up at the ceiling. “I feel so protective of her. I don’t want him to find out.”