Page 31 of Beckon

“Soooo?” She knew exactly what her mother was asking, but she played dumb.

“What?”

“Don’t what me, young lady, Chandler. That’s what.”

Tami couldn’t help but roll her eyes. They’d talked about nothing else since their date and their many, many, rides.

“Should Harold be jealous?” Tami asked, tongue in cheek. “I mean, you seem more obsessed with him than I am.” She took a bite of pie to cover her smile.

“Oh please, you are dying to talk about him again so spill. You only gave me an outline of the first date; I want the fleshed-out story.” When Tami didn’t immediately indulge her mother’s request, she huffed. “Unless you’re too grown up to talk to your old mother about such things.”

She sighed as she rose from the table with the agility of an octogenarian, and shuffled—yes, shuffled—to the sink with their plates.

“Oh, dear lord, Mother, dramatic much?”

“Tami,” she whined. “Don’t tease me. I know there is more to it than just a nice date. Do you know your feet haven’t touched the ground since you met him? And every one of your nighttime rider stories to Chester are versions of him.”

Tami’s jaw dropped.

“Yes.” Her mother put the hand towel she was fidgeting with on the counter and brought teacups to the table. Carefully pouring hot water before returning the pot to the stove and her backside to her seat. “I listen to you tuck your son in, so sue me. Once I move out, I won’t be a part of that every night and I’m already kind of missing it. But that’s not the point. You’re holding out on me. I know he orders a ride at least four times a week. I also know it started with that first date. I have been patiently waiting over a month for details, are you really going to deny me?”

She seemed genuinely hurt by that.

Tami laid her hand on her mother’s, which rested on the table. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m not so much holding out on you as I am holding out on myself. He makes me feel things I never have before.”

There, she’d finally admitted it and said it aloud. Her mother remained silent, letting her work through it on her own.

“I mean…” She took a sip of hot tea. “Not even with Reese. I know it’s wrong to dishonor his memory like that because what we had was good and pure and perfect. How can I just feel things for a man I’ve had a trip to the arcade with, onerealreal date with, and countless rides? It’s just wrong. I’m a horrible person.”

“Stop that right now, Tamitha Beth. You are not a horrible person. You never have been, and I don’t think you ever could be if you tried.”

“But what about Reece?”

“What about him?”

The matter-of-fact tone her mother spoke with caused her to lean back and just stare at her.

“Look, Tami.” Her mother’s tone gentled. “Reese was a good man. A good husband and a good father. I would never say otherwise. I will always hold a place for him in my heart because he gave me my grandson and made my daughter extremely happy, but he wasn’t a saint. Your marriage wasn’t without its problems, just like everyone else’s.”

Disbelief. That’s all Tami could think.

“How can you say that, Mom?”

“I can say that because it’s the truth. Same with your father. It has always been funny to me how when people pass, the ones who loved them most act like they knew them the least. They only remember the good and strike all the bad from the history books. It’s like dying earns you sainthood within your old house.”

Tami sat stunned. Not knowing how to process what her mother was saying but feeling the flutter of truth to it.

“I did it with your father, honey. He was a good man, no denying that, but he wasn’t a saint. And until I accepted all that and realized it was okay to feel for other people, even feel more, I couldn’t move on.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, Tami dwelling on what her mom said. She let her mind drift back to the ranch. The way she felt when she looked at Chandler before guilt crept in was so different than she did after. Her mother spoke the truth, she knew it in her bones.

She had to let Reese go, truly go, guilt and all, if she wanted to move on and maybe not miss out on what she felt might be something big.

“I kissed him.”

It was her mother’s turn to suffer from loose jaw syndrome and it made her smile.

“You kissed him, or you kissed him back?”

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