*
Nick put his beer in the fridge and poured them each a glass of Beverly’s wine while Josie served the soup and bread. Nick was not a wine drinker and Josie found the gesture sweet. As they sipped their wine Beverly sat at the table telling Nick about her solo drive cross-country, and about the various truck stops she’d slept in along the way.
“I came across every sort of trucker and lot lizard you can imagine,” she said. “Some fella even said he’d marry me if I’d keep him company on his haul up north to Canada. Told me when we were done I could divorce him and have half of everything he owns.”
“Were you tempted?” Nick asked.
“Not even. He was nice enough to look at, but I figured half a nothing won’t get me too far.”
By the time they finished dinner and moved onto the back porch to take in the sunset, it was clear Beverly had won Nick over. This wasn’t the same mother Josie had grown up with, nor the one she fought with during every visit and phone call she’d had since leaving home. Had she changed, or was she the same manipulative woman Josie had expected? And more importantly, would Josie have time to tell the difference before her mom won over her friends and staked her claim in the midst of Josie’s life?
*
It was after one in the morning before Beverly left. Josie closed the front door after her mom drove off and sat down on the couch next to Nick, worn out from the night.
Nick said, “I have to tell you. I don’t get your irritation toward your mom. She seems like a sweet lady. She’s just looking for family and friendship.”
Josie groaned. “Seriously, Nick. You spent one evening with her. She’s a manipulator. She shows you what she wants you to see.”
“I get that. She’s no angel. My dad was a son of a bitch while I was growing up. But he’s my dad, you know? Sometimes you forgive, just because it’s family, not because it’s right.”
Josie felt her face flush. She would have liked to have said, Shut the hell up. You don’t know what you’re talking about. Instead, she said, “At least he was a son of a bitch. My mother was nothing. When my dad died, that was it. I was eight years old and she shut down on me.”
“She couldn’t cope. I see it all the time. Some people don’t have that coping mechanism.”
She raised a hand to stop him. “I’m done, Nick. She’s here. I’ll deal with her. But I don’t want to talk about her parenting skills right now.”
They sat for a moment without talking. Josie wished the TV was on, but it wasn’t, and if she turned it on it would feel like she was silencing him. This was the part of relationships that she disliked. Always second-guessing herself, tensing up over her inability to do the right thing, or even knowing what the right thing was.
“Look. We’re no good at this. Right?” Nick asked.
She turned to look at him. “At what?”
“At this. At talking about”—he shrugged—“whatever this is.”
She sighed. “I think you’re right. We should probably quit talking before we say something that gets us into a fight.”
He grinned. “Exactly. We’re no good at whatever this is. So let’s skip it.”
“Skip it,” she repeated.
“That’s what I said. You’re getting mad. I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. So we skip it and go to bed. You give me a back rub. I’ll give you a foot rub. And then we go to bed happy instead of mad.”
“You could be a marriage counselor.”
“Call me Dr. Nick.”
*
Once they finally made it to bed they skipped the back and foot rubs. Nick curled around Josie’s body and they both settled into an almost instant sleep. Until Josie awoke with the same jolt she’d experienced the previous two nights. She’d intended to tell Nick, but had forgotten with her mom’s visit.
As she lay in a tangled mess of sheets, trapped under Nick’s leg, Josie’s skin prickled and her body was suddenly covered in a thin sheen of sweat. She pulled her leg from under Nick’s and rolled over on her back to focus on the sound. Across the room the clock on the bureau read 2:13 a.m. She was certain it was the same person coming down the gravel road.
She laid her hand on Nick’s arm, which was stretched out beside her. “Nick,” she whispered.
She felt the instant flex of muscle in his forearm, an automatic response from too many years of working in law enforcement. “What’s the matter?” His voice was hoarse with sleep but already worried.
“Do you hear the car coming down the road?”
He propped himself up on an elbow, and they both lay completely still, listening through the open bedroom windows to the faraway engine.
“I hear it,” he said. “What’s the problem?”