April bit her lip as she read the texts waiting for her the next morning. In the end, she settled on a partial truth.
April:
He’s an ass. I lasted like a half-hour before I left.
What had happened afterward, in the car … Well, she’d decided it was best left well alone. If she ignored it, then she could pretend she hadn’t had some kind of temporary insanity that had led to her making out with Luke Pointer and, worse, that it had been … good.
As she headed downstairs, she reasoned that everything that had happened with Tyler had just gotten to her. She’d needed to let off some steam and it madesense to do that with someone who wouldn’t expect strings attached. Strings she just didn’t have the capacity for right then.
She’d opted to ditch morning coffee with the girls that day, still too out of sorts from her actions last night. Plus, it would be easier not to think about it if her friends weren’t grilling her for details.
“Hey, honey,” her mom chirped as April walked into the kitchen. “There’s fresh coffee in the pot.”
“Thank you.”
“I was thinking I might start going through Martin’s workroom today, if you want to help?”
Maybe she should have gone out for coffee instead. “Yeah, sure.” There was only so long she could put this off, and her mom needed her.
After they’d had breakfast and she’d had the chance to get changed into the cute two-piece pink workout gear she’d found in town the other day, April followed her mom toward the third door along on the upstairs landing. Up until then, she’d been trying not to even look at the door, let alone go inside.
“Cute set,” Kathy said, and April knew her mom was just trying to distract her, and probably herself, as she pushed open the door and the faint smell of her dad’s aftershave drifted out. Her mom sucked in a breath, breathing out slowly before taking the first step inside.
The space had always been what her dad had calledorganized chaos. Papers were shuffled into larger pilesthat had no rhyme or reason she could immediately see, at least three empty mugs were scattered about the desk, each with dried coffee around the inner rim, and on the far side of the desk that wrapped around the walls there were miniatures waiting to be painted. Everything was exactly as he’d left it, like he would walk back in any second, collect up the mugs, and proceed to do the walk of shame down to the kitchen to clean them.
Her mom touched the handle of the blue mug closest to them and her smile made the corners of her eyes wrinkle. “I wondered where this one went.”
“You haven’t been in here since?”
She shook her head. “You might have noticed, but I only make it up the stairs to use the bathroom these days.”
Surprised she was addressing it, April moved closer. “You’ve been sleeping on the couch for six months?”
Kathy bit her lip before giving a curt nod. “Your brother doesn’t know. I just can’t … It’s not the same without your dad. Sleeping in that bed, surrounded by his things … I see him when I close my eyes, just always out of reach.”
April hadn’t known it was that bad. Of course, she knew her mom was grieving, that they all missed her dad, but her mom had lost her partner, her other half. April had never experienced that kind of love. “I know you said no when we spoke about it at the beginning of the year, Mom, but if you’ve changed your mind andwant to sell the house, that’s OK. Whatever you want, you know Noah and I will support you.”
Her mom nodded, eyes damp. “Thank you, I know. Let’s just start with this room and see how we go?”
“Sure.” She could understand that.Step by step.
They worked in companionable silence for a while, sorting through the books stacked haphazardly in the small space and trying to make sense of the various papers stored in a system that only made sense to her dad.
“So you went on a date last night?”
Where her mom had got that info from, April didn’t know. But she couldn’t say she was happy about it. “Oh, no. I met up with Luke—he wanted to talk about the bar.”
Kathy hummed, face screwed up as she attempted to read the illegible writing on a piece of scrap paper. “I thought you and your brother already sorted that out.”
“We did,” she reassured her quickly. “Luke just didn’t get the memo.”