When Christy answered the door and let her in, Mary Jo hummed in sympathy at the nasty bruise.
“You need to have that looked at.”
“Nothing broken,” Christy told her. “Just bruised, and it will fade in time. Adam made me go to a doctor. A good thing, too, because Mercy was about to take me to the doctor herself.”
An exaggeration. Maybe.
Mary Jo apparently thought so, too, because she gave me a cool look. “It looks like it hurts.”
Christy touched her cheek, then shook her head. “It could have been worse. A man I dated a couple of times turned up dead, and I’m pretty sure Juan is responsible.”
“Ahh jeez,” Mary Jo said. “I’m so sorry.”
Warren came in. He didn’t knock and thus avoided the chance that Christy would answer the door again so she could make everyone think either that I was using her to do all the menial tasks or make me think she was trying to reclaim her home. Or both at once.
Probably she was just doing normal things, and I was being paranoid and jealous.
Yes, I was going to have to work on my attitude. Adam kissed the top of my head.
“Let’s all move to the dining room,” Christy said. “I put dinner out there. Is your new wolf coming, Mercy? If we wait much longer, dinner might get cold.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. Maybe something came up.”
“Let’s eat without him, then,” she said. “If he comes later, he can have leftovers if there are any, or I can make him a sandwich.”
There was room at the kitchen table to eat there, but the dining-room table had been set with a tablecloth and good china and all. I wondered if Jesse had set it, or if Christy had done so while Adam and I were up changing. The only time I used the dining-room table was on Sunday breakfasts or holidays when everyone didn’t fit in the kitchen.
I sat down on Adam’s right, and Christy took the seat to his left before Jesse could sit in it. Jesse smiled apologetically at me and took the next seat over.
“All right, everyone,” Christy said as soon as everyone was seated. “Dig in.”
The sandwiches were all cut into triangles and set on a plate in the center of the table, a gloriously beautiful presentation with bacon cooked exactly right, red tomatoes, and bright crispy lettuce on golden toast. A huge, cut-glass bowl held a salad and sat next to a plate with homemade croutons.
Cloth napkins were folded just so, and there was a vase with the first of the spring lilies from the front flower bed. The whole table looked as though Martha Stewart and Gordon Ramsay had both come to my home to prepare a casual meal for a few friends.
Mary Jo took a bite of the sandwich and all but purred. “I haven’t had a BLT this good since that picnic you had out here that Fourth of July, do you remember? You made BLTs and carrot cake. I have missed this.”
That started a conversation about the better old days that eventually spread to include Adam and even Warren. Jesse met my eyes and grimaced in sympathy.
I didn’t know if Christy was taking over my home on purpose or by accident, but I had my suspicions. I knew what I would do if someone else had Adam. I might use my fangs or a gun instead of a BLT dinner, but Christy’s weapons were different from mine. I did know that the only way to take control back was to be a witch—and that was just another way of losing.
“Do you like your sandwich?” Christy asked me as the good-old-days talk started to wind down.
“It is very good,” I said. “Thank you for making dinner.”
Mary Jo gave me a look. “I’d have thought that just having flown in and being hurt, someone else could have cooked tonight, Christy.”
“That was my job,” said Jesse. “But Mom said—”
“I told her that I wanted to make her favorite dinner because I don’t get much chance to see her.” Christy looked up, her blue eyes—Jesse’s eyes—swam with tears that she bravely held back. “I know that’s my fault. I’m not a good mother.”
She wasn’t lying. She believed everything that she said. I had to give her credit for accepting the responsibility for what she’d put Jesse through—but the thing was, she was looking at Adam when she said it. Then she looked around the table. She didn’t look at Jesse. This wasn’t an apology; it was a play for sympathy. I wasn’t the only one who noticed.
Jesse put her fork down, carefully. “Thank you for dinner, Mom. It was good. I just am not feeling well tonight. I’m going to head up and do some homework.”
She picked up her plate and carried it into the kitchen and left us in silence. If I said anything, I worried she’d make Jesse’s leaving or her bad parenting my fault, so I kept my mouth shut. I don’t know why no one else said anything.
“You see?” said Christy huskily as soon as Jesse was out of human earshot. “I don’t know why I said that, I knew it would upset her. She doesn’t want to hurt my feelings—but she can’t lie, either.”
I’d lived through Christy’s drama for a while now—Sorry, Jesse, I know I was supposed to pick you up or you were supposed to fly down, but it just isn’t convenient right now with reasons that varied from new boyfriends to trips to Rio. Work trips, really. I knew that she was good at manipulating people, and still the expression on her bruised face made me feel bad for her.
“It’s all right,” Mary Jo told her. “You’ll have time now to fix things between you.”
And abruptly all my sympathy died away, washed away by dismay. Just how long was Christy planning to stay?
“I don’t know,” Christy murmured sadly, her fork playing with the remnants of her salad. “I’d like to think so.”
Adam patted her on the shoulder.
I ate with steady determination that was not helped at all by the fact that the food was good. I could cook anything that went into the oven as long as it had sugar and chocolate in it. Beyond that, I was a pretty indifferent cook. Adam was a lot better than I, but his ex-wife was practically a gourmet chef. She’d made the mayonnaise on the BLTs from scratch.
“So,” Warren said, putting his silverware on his empty plate. “If you are through eating, I’ve got some questions about this ex-boyfriend of yours.”
“She’s hurt and tired,” said Mary Jo. “Can’t questions wait until she’s had a chance to recover?”
“No,” said Adam. “We need to deal with him, so Christy can go back to Eugene and get on with her life.”
Christy turned her wet blue eyes on my husband, and said, “I’ve been thinking of moving back home.”
The food I had just swallowed went down wrong and sent me off in a paroxysm of coughing.