Total pages in book: 99
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93002 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 465(@200wpm)___ 372(@250wpm)___ 310(@300wpm)
“You won’t,” I said.
“Will she like me?” Sterling asked in a soft voice that made me want to unsnap her seat belt and pull her onto my lap.
I raised our joined hands again and kissed her fingers. “You, she’s going to love you. It’s me she’s not that thrilled about.”
“What’s she like?” Sterling asked.
As much as I’d told my mom about Sterling, I’d never shared that much about my mom. I’d avoided any but the most general mentions of my past in my efforts to hide who I was. Now, I tried to think of how to describe my mother and gave up. “She’s great,” I said. “But you’ll see soon enough.”
The rest of the flight went by slowly. We napped, ate dinner, and watched a movie. It felt like days had passed by the time we landed, the wheels bouncing on the tarmac, Sterling’s hand tightening around mine as we rolled to a stop at the gate.
I texted my mother when I was in line to get the rental car, letting her know we were almost on the road.
I made lentil soup and fresh bread instead of fatted calf. See you when you get here.
That was it. It seemed she’d thawed a little, but not all the way. She was still pissed. It was there in every missing smiley face and heart emoji. When this was all over, I’d have to figure out how to make it up to her. I glanced over at Sterling, chewing on her lower lip, I thought, nervous about meeting my mother. I was hoping my mother would love Sterling as much as I did. I was looking forward to a future where my biggest problem was the two of them ganging up on me. I could only hope.
Chapter Thirty-One
FORREST
It was a ninety-minute drive to the coast, where my mom and Jerry had their place. We pulled in a little after I’d guessed we’d be there, coming to a stop in the gravel drive in front of their house, the deep navy of the Pacific Ocean far in the distance, below the cliffs beyond the house. Once, this property had been part of hundreds of acres overlooking the coastline, with sweeping views surrounded by wild nature. Years before, the land had been subdivided, and Jerry had managed to snag ten acres with a sliver of the cliffs to call his own. A handful of outbuildings had come with the land, and he’d used one of them as his pottery studio, but he hadn’t built anything until he’d convinced my mother to marry him. Then they’d designed a modern house, all angles and wide cedar plank siding, with tall plate glass windows that looked over the land and the ocean beyond the cliffs.
Around the house, they had a kind of farm. I say “kind of” because it was nothing the two of them couldn’t manage easily. There were chickens and a goat. The area she’d set aside for vegetables was at least fifty percent bigger than the last time I’d been out. Speckled around the property were the outbuildings, all of them with dark green siding built in a style that far predated the contemporary main dwelling.
When my mom had met Jerry, she’d thought he was a potter, teaching a ceramics class she’d signed up for as a way to fill her time and keep her creative juices flowing. She’d assumed Jerry was a poor artist and been chagrined to find out that he’d actually started and sold a successful company selling kombucha. His distinctively branded bottles were found all over the Pacific Northwest. He wasn’t Sawyer-level wealthy, but he’d had a healthy bank account and the desire to spoil my mother with as much compost and as many farm animals as she could handle. These days, she was mostly retired, puttering around her land, growing things, playing with experiments in the kitchen, and generally causing trouble.
At the sound of our doors closing, my mom strode out of the house onto the deck. The familiar sight of her sent a stab through my heart and brought unexpected tears to my eyes. It was the first time in my life I’d gone so long without seeing her, and fuck, I’d missed her.
She stood on the front deck in a pair of old jeans—probably Jerry’s—that hung from her hips and were patched at the knee, held up by a braided leather men’s belt. Over that, she wore a flowing grass green tank top, her mostly gray hair long and wild in waves and curls almost to the middle of her back. She’d added streaks of hot pink since I’d last seen her. Except for the gray, she looked years younger than her age. Her eyes were sharp as they landed on us.
“Finally.” She strode down the steps from the deck and down the walkway to come to a stop in front of Sterling. She gave Sterling a slow once-over with hazel eyes so like mine, taking in every detail of the woman beside me. When she got to Sterling’s face, she smiled. “Sterling Sawyer,” she stated with a hint of Georgia in her voice, “I heard you don’t take after your daddy.”