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“Yep.”
“Great. Let’s go so you can tell me what guy sent you running to me.”
How in the heck does she know?
CHAPTER12
NOAH
ONE WEEK LATER
Jinny doesn’t understandwhy I’m so upset. She gets taken advantage of all the time. All I wanted to do was take her away for the weekend. Maybe go to a cabin and relax with her, but she couldn’t do it. Then she went somewhere else instead.
She hasn’t been in class either, for the last two. I went to confront her about it and she wasn’t home. I called her and she said she was in Miami, thinking. What the fuck could that mean?
I tried to focus on work, but I couldn’t. On Friday, I give up and drive the three hours to North Carolina to my mom’s house. She’s having a Christmas party, so I slip in easily. I find her in the kitchen, singing a Christmas song. She looks different. Happy. If not for the Anis Anis perfume, I may have thought she was someone else. Every year for mother’s day, my sisters and I have bought this perfume for her. She loves it. Even as adults, we send Ginger, the youngest, money and she goes to the mall to pick it up. She was just two when Dad left. Paula was four. I don’t have much to do with him. He was a bastard for doing what he did and then to start another family after us, fuck him. I don’t need that shit and there’s no justification for what he did.
“Noah James Wyatt? What the hell are you doing here?” she asks, as she adds more crackers to a charcuterie board in the kitchen. Jingle Bell Rock is playing in the other room, loudly. Because of Jinny, Christmas songs don’t grate on my nerves anymore.
“Hey Mom. It’s good to see you.” I move around the center island to kiss her cheek. She frowns at me, almost like she doesn’t know who I am, then she smiles big.
“You didn’t tell me you were coming.” Despite being so close, I rarely come home.
“I didn’t know until I was halfway here,” I admit.
“Girl trouble, son?”
“How’d you know?”
“It’s written all over your face, though I’ve never seen you like this before.”
“I met her, Ma. The one, but…”
“You’re worried you’ll leave like your father did?”
“God, no. I love her too much for that,” I say then regret it. “I didn’t mean that.”
“That’s okay, Noah. Your father didn’t love me. Don’t you think I know that?”
“He loved you enough to have three kids, he should have stuck it out..”
“Then we’d all be miserable and I would have left him. You’d be standing in his kitchen instead of mine, hating me instead of him. You should let it go, hon.”
“I’m sorry, Ma. I never thought of it like that.”
“Don’t be. He’s happy and I am too.”
“Babe, is there anymore champagne in here?” a man I don’t know asks, coming into the kitchen.
“Babe?” I question, my eyebrow shooting up.
“Oh. You must be Noah. I’m Dwight Carlise, your Mama’s fiance.”
“I was going to tell you, Noah. It just didn’t seem right over the phone.
“I see. Nice to meet you Dwight,” I say, shaking his extended hand. Sure, my mom has dated over the years, but nothing serious.
“The champagne is in the fridge,” Mom says.
