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"Mom?" he called as he poked around the empty house until he found her working on her laptop in her home office. He hung on the door frame and poked his head inside, asking, "You seen my keys?"
Barbara looked up from the screen, reading glasses perched on the bridge of her nose. "Your keys?" she echoed, innocently puzzled. "I haven't seen them. Did you misplace them?"
Aiden gritted his teeth. "I put them in the tray when I came in. They're not there now."
Barbara, elaborately thoughtful, tapped one manicured nail against her pursed lips and said, "Are you sure you didn't drop them outside? I've told you to be more responsible. You're always losing things."
Aiden made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat, but he didn't waste breath replying. He beelined back to the kitchen and began searching the usual hiding places from his childhood. He checked the top of the fridge, the decorative vase on the living room bookshelf, the laundry room, and the sofa cushions. He was in the middle of examining a flour canister when his mother reappeared.
Her posture was solicitous, and her smile was hopeful and sweet. "You're always in such a hurry to leave," she said. "Maybe this is nature's way of telling you to slow down. We never finished our conversation."
Aiden took a deep breath and tamped down on the anger beginning to trickle into his bloodstream. "Mom, I don't have time for this," he said, biting back his aggravation. "I need my keys."
"Then you shouldn't have lost them," she said haughtily.
"Jesus Christ!" he exploded. "We both know I didn't lose them! I'm going to be late for work if you don't give back my fucking keys!"
His mother's eyes widened with shock and fury. "How dare you use such language around me? I raised you to be a man of honor!"
"Right now, I'm a man without his fucking keys!" Aiden repeated, blood pressure surging. His face grew hot, and his temples began to pound. He took off his hat and raked his hands through his hair, trying to cool off, but it did no good. He nearly bent its shape when he jammed it back on his head. His hands kept trying to ball into fists, so he shoved them in his pockets. He didn't want her to feel threatened. Despite everything, she had raised him to be a man of honor, and he prided himself on always treating women gently. Even the ones who didn't deserve it.
"I would never stoop to such infantile tactics," his mother said, hard-eyed and thin-lipped in her displeasure. "I'm only trying to help you, and this is the thanks I get?"
Aiden took a deep breath and tried to calm his pounding heart. His earlier headache had returned with a vengeance. "I just want my keys, Mom. I'm not moving back in. I can't. I have my own life."
She sniffed. "Some life. No one will ever take you seriously when you live in a tin can and act like a clown."
There it was, the same voice that echoed in the back of his own head, the one that told him every day that he was a piece of shit. Aiden knew it sounded familiar. He laughed bitterly. "I'm not asking for your approval, Mom. We're way beyond that. I just need my keys."
Barbara's face softened, and something that looked like uncertainty flickered across her expression for a moment. Then her resolution hardened. "If you leave now, Aiden, you'll be making another big mistake. You're going down the wrong path. You're almost thirty years old, single, aimless, and without assets. You need stability. You need?—"
"I need to live life on my own terms," Aiden interrupted in a raw voice. "I haven't needed your permission in a long time."
"Fine! Go, then!" She stepped aside, flinging her arm out dramatically toward the door. "Don't come crying to me when you realize your mistake!"
Aiden hesitated, weighing his options, but there weren't any. Just like always. He knew from experience there was no getting through to her when she was like this, and she wasn't above calling the sheriff to trespass him from the property if he stuck around. She'd cool down eventually. His keys would turn up in the mail or on his doorstep in a few days, with no explanation or apology. He could bum rides to work in the meantime.
He avoided looking at his mother when he stepped back into the biting cold. The wind had picked up, bending the branches of the naked oaks that speckled the property. He popped his collar against the wind, tipped the brim of his hat low, and began the long trudge back into town.
He had plenty of friends he could call for a ride, but that felt strangely like admitting defeat. Right now, he was walking on nothing but pride.
The house wasn't too far in the boonies. He'd been able to ride his bike into town for lemonade when he was a kid, but it was still far enough to be an uncomfortable walk in bad weather.
He made a quick call to the Triple M to let Celia, his foreman, know he was going to be late. Once that was handled, he buried his hands deep in his pockets and hunched his shoulders against the wind.
The road was dead quiet except for the crunch of snow under his boots. If he concentrated on nothing but his steps, he could count them until his mind went blank.
Chapter Fourteen
SETH
"Wipe your boots! Wipe your boots!" Gus was yelling before Seth even crossed the shop's threshold.
Seth froze in the doorway and glanced down at his muddy boots. A few days of intense sunshine had melted plenty of snowpack, turning the land into an unattractive slurry of brown sludge that got everywhere. Most folks had given up trying. A sign hanging in the Hungry Pig's window read simply: Mud happens. Deal with it. But not the old man; he was armed with a mop and a mission.
Seth backed up a couple steps and sheepishly scraped his boots on the mat, but the damage was already done.
Gus glowered and grabbed a rag mop from the corner of the shop. "Ungrateful bastards, the lot of you," he muttered, hobbling over to wipe up the new puddles. "I laid these boards with my bare hands back in the eighties. I'm not going to let it go to pot just because West is in charge now."
