Page 69 of Midnight Surrounds Us

Gone was my peacefully silent reading time, with nothing but the wind rustling the leaves in the trees outside or the far-off calls of my jays.

And just like it used to be when they were teenagers, my house was a disaster zone. As I set my empty plate in the sink, it balanced dangerously on a stack of coffee-ringed mugs, milkglasses, and more dirty plates. They couldn’t use one cup for the day. No, they had to empty the cupboards for every sip they took. All the silverware was dirty. I’d had to wash three forks for the pancakes. It wasn’t like either of them would’ve done it. They would’ve eaten the damn pancakes with their hands before they washed a dish. I should’ve let them.

Dirty laundry littered every corner, hung from the couch and chairs, the hall bathroom looked like a grown man had exploded in there, and there was already a stain on my plush Oyster Dove-colored carpet in the living room that I hoped was chocolate and not something else, like dog shit from the neighbor’s yard because my boys wouldn’t think to take off their shoes when they came in the house, even if I tattooed a reminder on both their foreheads.

A memory came crashing forward from the recesses of my mind, of Tommy and the boys coming home after two days of camping and fishing. The twins couldn’t have been more than nine years old. I’d heard them pull into the driveway, so I stopped vacuuming and waited for them by the front door.

When they came in, Tommy dumped his tackle box on the floor. He hadn’t even smiled at me or kissed me hello. He stepped out of boots covered in dried mud and kicked them to the wall. Dirt went everywhere. The boys watched him and then did the same. And then all three of them, still dressed in dirty, damp clothes, plopped on the couch and complained about how hungry they were. They sat there, waiting for me to kick it into high gear and cook for them.

The boys had learned to disregard me from their father. He did it, so that made it okay, right?

And now, neither one of them had mentioned anything about what they might be planning to do since they’d lost their jobs and their apartment and had hauled most of their belongings back home, which were still packed under a tarp in the back oftheir dad’s old truck in my driveway. It had only just occurred to me that maybe they’d been waiting on me to unload and unpack their crap.

As soon as they’d stepped foot inside the house again, I’d turned into the same woman I’d been when their father was alive.

While my newfound happiness seemed to be leaking out of my pores, the boys kept eating, blissfully unaware of the heartbreak I felt or the fact that their lives falling apart meant mine would too.

I loved them. Nothing would ever change that, but did that mean I couldn’t love anyone else?

Didn’t I deserve to be loved? Didn’t I deserve the kind of love people had been writing about in books for centuries? Now, here it was, courting me and knocking on my door with flowers, lighting me up in ways I’d never even imagined, but I wasn’t allowed to claim it?

But as I wandered around the house, picking up dirty boxer shorts and stray unmatched socks, I couldn’t stop thinking about what Calla had said to me before she left my shop.

God! I wanted to slap her for telling me Ryder’s future was up to me. It wasn’t!

How the hell was being in a relationship with me going to ruin his chances of making his business a success? I hadn’t missed the way her eyes had darted around Your Local Bookie. She thought I was a failure in business, so what? That meant I’d bring Rye down with me?

And although she hadn’t said it outright, her meaning had been clear: I was a mother before all else, and if my kids still needed me, then it was my job—no, myobligation, even though the boys were old enough to vote and buy beer—to mother them and attend to them until they were ready for me to be something else to someone else.

Which might be never.

Rye had stayed away all week. He was busy at the ranch, and he thought giving me time with the boys would help us all deal. He texted me several times a day and called to say goodnight, but last night I’d missed his call because I’d been refereeing an argument and didn’t hear my phone. And I didn’t call back because telling him what his mother had said to me felt wrong, like I was some gossiping teenager, but the words stayed on the tip of my tongue all week.

And not saying it created a space between us that hadn’t been there before.

Micah called out for me. “Mama? Where you at?”

“What! I’m busy.”

“Sorry,” he said softly as he came up behind me in the living room. “Am I botherin’ you?”

Great. Now my mom guilt had really been activated.

I sighed. “No, Micah. I’m sorry I snapped. What do you need?”

He followed me to the laundry basket I’d left next to the boys’ bedroom door that they hadn’t yet used. “I just wanted to know if you’ve seen my tablet. Benji had it and now I can’t find it.”

Dumping an armful of socks and dirty T-shirts in, I said, “Haven’t seen it.”

“Shouldn’t you be at work?”

Lovely, another person to point out my 5,786thfailure of the week.

“Oh, what’s the point?”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means I haven’t been sellin’ tons of books. Maybe I should start lookin’ for a job.”

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