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“I did.” I’m sure what to say after that. Zeke and I don’t talk feelings. We actually don’t talk much at all unless he’s doing something dumb and I’m telling him to stop.
“Is she staying?” Zeke asks the question I’ve been avoiding since the moment I set eyes on Millie out at the acreage.
“I don’t know.”
Zeke pushes off the counter and claps my shoulder.
“Well, good luck with that, buddy.”
I’m left completely alone as silence falls on the house. Zeke goes back to work, and Tabby gives me a quick kiss on the cheek before she heads to school. It’s me and the sound of dish water sloshing in the sink and the clunk of dishes as I stack them on the counter.
Eventually the shuffle of my mother’s slippers on the hardwood pull me from my trance.
“Hey Ma,” I say, drying my hands on a towel and leaning on the counter. She’s wrapped up in my dad’s bath robe which swallows her tiny frame whole. Her thick dark hair is back in a bun at the base of her neck. Her features are sunken and tired, but she’s still young. She is young. Not quite fifty.
“Son,” she responds, grabbing milk from the fridge and closing it with a reverberating thud. Her energy is flat, and you’d never know that we haven’t spoken in months by the way she moved around me like I’ve always been there. Jet’s the one that manages Mom because I can’t keep my patience with her like he can. He maneuvers around her moods with dexterity and she doesn’t make it a secret that he’s her favorite son. He’s the son that takes her to church every Sunday. Mom is devoted to God and Jet is devoted to Mom.
I want to shake her until she stops pining after Jason and realizes what a useless ass he is. She never will and that’s what I can’t accept.
“I came by to tell you something before you hear it at church.” I tuck my hands in the pockets of my hoodie and resolve to put it out there.
She pauses her task to look at me for the first time.
“Briggs is back in town and she has a daughter. The kid is mine.” I quickly run over the main points about her and Mom’s brows lower into a frown.
“Your father would never do something like that,” she says, completely brushing over everything else. “Deception isn’t the Lord’s way. Your father is loyal to the Lord.”
I close my eyes and suck in a slow deep breath to calm the spiking frustration inside me. Of course, all she hears is the part about Dad and then defends him while making it about Jesus.
“I just wanted you to hear it from me.” I force the words through my filter, leaving out all the things I really want to say.
Arguing with my mother is impossible so I don’t. I step up to her, kiss her on the hair and leave.
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