New Hope, Old Grudges Read Online Anne Malcom

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Contemporary Tags Authors: Anne Malcom Advertisement

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Another punch to the chest.

“I made eggplant lasagna,” she declared. “It’s vegan. If you don’t count the cheese. Or the beef.” She winked. My mother toyed on and off with the idea of being a vegan because she certainly agreed with all of their principles, but she also loved a medium-rare steak.

My stomach growled as I looked at the steaming dish on the dining room table. Candles were lit, illuminating the cozy space. The table was long, made of reclaimed wood and surrounded by mismatched vintage chairs. It was always full.

Except now. Two plates were set—plates handmade by my mother, of course—along with two glasses and a bottle of wine in a decanter.

Another punch.

My mother’s eyes followed mine to the table. In that way of hers, she seemed to guess what I was thinking.

“Your brother wanted to be here,” she straightened the knife on the setting in front of her. “But he’s working late.”

That was bullshit, and we both knew it. I hadn’t spoken to Harry in two years, not since that horrible phone call. He hated me. Rightfully so, I guessed. I’d made my peace with it.

Or I’d thought I had. My throat burned slightly as my eyes found a framed photo of us, much younger, arms around each other, grinning wildly. I barely recognized myself, the frizzy hair, the glasses, the acne. No, that’s not true. I recognized her all too well. I still saw that girl in the mirror every day.

“That’s fine. I’m sure he’s busy.” I shrugged, keeping up the charade. My mom may have been naïve in many ways, but I was sure even she understood the rift that I’d created and just how permanent it was.

Her eyes glistened for a beat, communicating a sadness that was hard for me to witness. Luckily, my mother was not one to wallow.

“Sit,” she clapped her hands together before pulling out a chair. “You look starving, and your aura is all off … understandably.” For a split second, there was pity in my mother’s gaze. But only for a second before she covered it with a warm smile. “Nothing that good food and a decent amount of wine can’t fix.” She winked at me again.

Although I really didn’t feel like it, I smiled back at her. Because it really was impossible not to smile around someone like her. Who didn’t let life get her down, even for a second. Who never stopped loving you. Even when you gave her every reason to.

My body stiffened with a guilt so overwhelming, I almost cried out in pain. I’d been so hard on this woman. I’d shut her out, screened her calls … abandoned her when she needed me most.

I opened my mouth to apologize, my eyes watering. “Mom—” I choked out.

My mother reached out to squeeze my hand. “Eat. Drink. You need your strength. The rest we’ll figure out later. Together.”

I squeezed her hand back, nodding silently to hold in my tears.

Then, for the first time in over a decade, I sat at my family’s dinner table without my father.

You’d think I wouldn’t sleep well that night after sleeping the entire day. You’d be wrong. Especially after two helpings of my mother’s eggplant lasagna then two helpings of her peach cobbler plus over half the bottle of the wine she opened.

I collapsed back into my twin bed, had about three minutes to contemplate what my life now looked like, then mercifully, passed out.

I heard my mother moving around the next morning, early. The smell of coffee almost coaxed me up, since my mom made some of the best coffee I’d ever tasted. She added her special blend of cinnamon spices and in the fall and winter made her own pumpkin-spice syrup that Starbucks likely would’ve paid her millions for. It was that good.

But even her coffee and pumpkin spice wasn’t enough. I squeezed my eyes back shut and willed myself into unconsciousness. Unlike my mother and various ‘gurus’ in L.A., I did not believe in the power of willing something into being. But this time it worked.

By the time I emerged from my room, the house was quiet. That meant my mom was gone.

There was absolutely no chance our house was quiet when Fern Watson was around. Music would be playing, she’d be using her singing bowls, belting out the latest pop song and getting all the words wrong.

My father’s low chuckle would punctuate those sounds. A murmur of his voice, gentle, always gentle with my mother, even though he was a big man. Well over six feet, muscled from working in the forge and a belly from my mother’s cooking that didn’t take away from how handsome he was.

He was born and raised in New Hope. He was a mountain man at heart, wore plaid, boots, had a dark and full beard, had calluses on his hands from his teenage years onward.

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