I jumped. Who’d told her about Leo already?
“How have you been sleeping, with all this fresh country air?”
I breathed in relief. “Oh, um, I’ve been sleeping pretty good, actually.”
“And you look really good,” she said, examining me carefully. “You look rested. You skin is good, your eyes are bright, and your hair looks nice and strong.”
“Thanks, I eat a raw egg every day for a shiny coat. You want to check my teeth?”
“Don’t sass your mother, Roxie,” she said absently, still looking me over too carefully. Could she tell? Did she know? “Mmm-hmm,” she finally said.
I felt the same way I had when I was a kid and I tried to lie about whether or not I’d done my homework. She always knew.
“You’re free to go, Rox,” she said.
“Um, thanks, but I’ve still got ordering to finish up before I can leave today. I’ll see you back at the house. I’m sure Aunt Cheryl would prefer to nap on the couch rather than on the counter.” I smiled, and patted her on the hand. “Good to have you home, Mom.”
“I meant, you’re free to go back to California.”
I was halfway through the swinging door when I heard her words. I swooped back out to the diner.
“I’m home! You’re released!” she cried, making a grand gesture toward the front door. “I’m surprised you didn’t run for the hills the second we walked in.”
I sat down beside her, toying with a loose thread on my apron. The setting was much as it was when I was a little girl. Sitting side by side, not looking at each other, but at the yellow order tickets that flapped against the steel strip.
“I was thinking,” I finally said, spinning my phone on the counter as a distraction, “I sort of have to stay a bit longer. You see, you’re home sooner than I planned. I’m glad you’re home, but I’m not prepared yet. I um . . . still have cake orders to fill. I need to tell you about the cake orders I’ve been taking. And I’ve got these zombie classes I’m teaching. We’ve still got canning to learn, and I was hoping to get to pureeing and freezing before the last of the tomatoes go.”
Then my phone lit up with an incoming text. And on the screen was Leo’s name, and a picture that I’d taken the day he showed me his walnut . . . trees. He was grinning lazily, looking every inch the poster boy for Hot Farmer—it was my favorite picture of him. And though I quickly turned it over, I wasn’t quick enough.
My mother saw the picture. And she might have even seen the text. Oh man.
Her lips rolled in as she tried to hold back a grin. “I see.”
“You see nothing. This isn’t what it looks like.”
“I’d love to know what you think it looks like, when the most eligible bachelor in the state of New York is texting my daughter things like, ‘Hey Sugar Snap, last night was incredible and—’ ”
“Stop talking! Oh my God, make it stop!” I wailed, dropping my head onto the counter just like Aunt Cheryl.
“You’ve been making more than cakes this summer, Roxie Callahan!” My mother leaped up from her stool and ran behind the counter, grabbing two mugs and the coffee. Pouring us each a cup, she propped her chin up on her hands and arched her eyebrows. “Spill it.”
I spilled it after dinner, after Aunt Cheryl was sawing logs in the guest room, and my mother and I sat on the front porch. That front porch was seeing some action this summer, between the floor sex and the storytelling. My mother partook of a bowl of Colorado’s finest leaf, while I stuck with an iced coffee.
I kept the spill light and disclosed no real substance, admitting only to seeing Leo occasionally, casually. A few juicy nuggets easily distracted her, and with only the slightest nudging, I was able to turn her focus away from me and my love life, and on to how her trip had been.
Officially she couldn’t tell me whether they had won, but based on the fact that she was home early, and an artfully timed wink when I said, “Oh, for fuck’s sake, just tell me, you lost, right?” I put two and two together.
And as easy as it was to distract her with something shiny (talking about herself), she could be distracted even more by something shiny and rose petal filled (her love life).
My mother had met no less than three men on her trip. First there was Hank, an auto parts salesman from Akron, Ohio, traveling with his son for the show. An early favorite, he and Mom had shared one night of drunken kissing in San Francisco’s Chinatown after the Welcome to Amazing Race cast party. His son and Aunt Cheryl had intervened, explaining to each in turn that getting involved with the competition was a recipe for disaster. When my mother caught Hank with his hands down the pants of another competitor (Sabrina, a yoga instructor from Tallahassee), she agreed, and off Hank went into the discard pile.
Next up was Pierre, a French expat who’d been the instructor on a South Seas pearl diving expedition. After trying to free dive after only ten minutes of training and zero breath support, my mother had been hauled up out of the water and onto Pierre’s lap, whereupon she was resuscitated by the smitten Frenchman. She actually came around several moments before she publicly came around, so as to enjoy a little more mouth-to-mouth. My mother and Pierre enjoyed a night of oceanic skinny dipping, where she urged him to try to set a new world record for holding his breath underwater while otherwise occupied . . .
I nearly had to get the scotch to listen to that story.
And finally, there was Wayne Tuesday. Yep, his actual name.