I flopped my messy rectangle on top of her neat pile and grabbed another towel. Usually I cared that the ends were lined up, but really . . . our houseguest was an alien, not Martha Stewart. And I was feeling a little queasy for some reason.
Eileen caught me looking at the monitor again and opened her mouth, but changed her mind and pulled her lip back between her teeth.
“Sweetheart, Adam is safe with Sal. He won’t let anything happen to him. Or Cara and Traveler.”
She snapped a towel in the air and jerked it into formation—hem to hem, halved, quartered—before giving up and clutching it to her chest. “Why don’t you care?!”
“What are you talking about? Of course I care!”
“I know you do! So why don’t you act like it?”
“Honey, I understand this has been a rotten couple of days . . . well, weeks, really . . . but you’re being a little . . . ” I let the words trail off and took a deep breath instead. “Eileen. He’s a married man. Period. End of story.”
“But . . . ”
“No! There are no buts!” Of all the things we should be talking about . . . ! “Right is right, and wrong is wrong. I may not be a perfect mother, but damn it, I’ve taught you the difference!”
Her eyes welled up a little, but she nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”
“Come here, you.” I pulled her into a hug, trapping the fluffy towel between us. “If you don’t want dinner, how about some hot chocolate?” Her eyes widened, and I kissed her forehead. “Good mom, not perfect mom, remember?”
Towels folded, we left the pair of clunking machines bravely soldiering on. She set the laptop on the kitchen counter—radar still showing an intense area of red just offshore—and poured soymilk into the saucepan while I added cocoa powder and spices. We took turns stirring as the smell of vanilla and cinnamon wafted around us, and she leaned in to inhale deeply—but I was feeling a little squeamish at the thought of that much sugar in my system. Real food would have been better. Something solid and bland like crackers.
My balance was a little off, too. I shifted my weight, but the floor didn’t feel level. I passed the spoon back to Eileen and rolled my shoulders, stretching and adjusting my posture.
“Headache?” she asked. “I can finish if you want to lie down?”
A sweet suggestion, but it made my heart skip. Aliens a few miles away and Sal not here? Not a chance. “It’s almost ready. Why don’t we drink it in my room?”
Sitting on the bed together sounded cozy and safe, and I managed to stay on my feet long enough for the cocoa to simmer, though I didn’t risk carrying my own mug. She thought it was funny as I veered into the doorway and bumped my elbow, and even though I could’ve done without a new bruise, it was good to hear her giggle.
The sheets were in the dryer, but my comforter had been spared from the muck, so we spread it across the mattress and settled with pillows behind our backs and the laptop at our feet. A quiet rain brushed the windows, and, for a moment, we were cocooned in normalcy. The radar refreshed again, still blotchy reds and purples.
“Shouldn’t they be back by now?” She hadn’t even tasted her treat, and I mostly held mine for warmth.
“I really don’t know, hon. Seems like it? But maybe with rough conditions they had to go slower . . . ? I haven’t been out on a boat since your grandpa took me once, and I don’t remember where we went or how long it took.” I just remember water all around and no land in sight and feeling both terrified and very, very safe. I was a jumpy kid by the time I was ten.
“Did you fish?”
“He tried to teach me. I cried when he put the first minnow on a hook and begged him to set it free.”
“Do you think . . . I mean, do we know if he was my grandfather?”
My confusion lasted only long enough for me to swallow past the bile rising in my throat. “Absolutely.” I twisted to look directly. “I am your mother, John Martin was your grandfather, Lisa Mae was your grandmother, Madeline Marie Parker was your great-grandmother, and you have lots and lots of other relatives who would all have loved you dearly if they’d had a chance to know you.”
“I guess . . . ”
“No! There is no guessing. This is the truth.”
“But how do you know? If they can change our memories, how can you tell what’s real? You didn’t even remember him being there when I was born!”
A fat tear slipped down her nose and splashed in her mug. Gently, I took it from her and set both drinks on the nightstand. She let me gather her close and tuck her under my arm as she whimpered. My poor angel. Bad enough to have a freak for a mother—now she finds out that she might be a freak, too.
“Leenie, my angel, I know what’s real because I can feel it. Inside. I know you’re real, and I know our family was real, and I know that somehow they’re still with us.”
“Adam’s real,” she snuffled against me.
I sighed. So young. “Yes, sweetheart. And in a very important way he’s a part of our family now. And so is Cara and Traveler. ‘Family’ means the people we care about and who care about us.”
“But my fath—the man you thought you married—he wasn’t real . . . ?”
I had the strangest taste of blood in my mouth now, and my tongue was stinging as if I’d bitten it, but Eileen’s question was all that mattered. This was what we’d been avoiding all evening, because she hadn’t known what to ask, and I hadn’t known what to say. But maybe, like so many other single mothers before me, there was a simple truth that mattered more than anything else.
“Being
