Page 12 of The Master

“You’ve never been serious with anyone before, and definitely not that fast. I was worried about you.”

“I should have come to you first thing, but I was worried you’d be disappointed in me.” Even as the words left me, a huge weight lifted from my shoulders. I hadn’t realized just how much it had been stressing me out, keeping this from her.

“Why would you think that?” She didn’t sound angry, just concerned and confused.

“Because I’ve always been such a good judge of character, and I thought if I told you what had happened, you’d wonder why I hadn’t seen it coming.”

She was quiet for a few seconds, and then said, “We’re all occasionally blinded when it comes to someone we care about. Sometimes, whatever the issue is can be worked through. Sometimes, it can’t.”

“I think he and I are working through it,” I said. “We talked today. That’s how I found out you’d called Finley. Nate really listened to what I had to say…wait.” I pressed my fingers to my temples. “Let me go back a bit to what the problem was in the first place.”

Mom was silent as I explained, letting me get through everything without interruption, and when I was done, I waited while she processed.

“Do you believe him? About things being different with you and him?”

“I do.” I remembered the sincerity in his expression. “As far as I know, when he’s done with a girlfriend, he’s done. I’ve never heard of him working to strengthen a relationship once there’s been a falling out.”

I hoped I wasn’t reading too much into it, but if I was, Mom would tell me, no matter if it hurt.

“I asked Finley about him,” she said, surprising me with the admission. “I wanted to know what sort of man Nate is, and I wanted to know if, should it come down to it, would Finley defend him or you.”

Leave it to my mother to have figured out a way to test both of the new men in my life at the same time, I thought wryly. “And?”

“Finley said that he believes Nate is a good man who’s made some questionable decisions when it came to women, but that when Nate’s with you, he is, and will continue to become, a better man. Then I asked Finley what would happen if he was wrong and Nate went back to that poor decision-making.” Her blue-green eyes glinted with a familiar hardness, the light they took on when Mom had set her mind to something. “He asked if I wanted to come up with the alibi or if he should.”

I couldn’t really tell if Mom was joking or not, but it wasn’t too far out of character for that to have been Finley’s actual response.

“I like your father.”

At least that was a statement I could agree with whole-heartedly. “Me too.”

“We did luck out in that part of the family department.”

Something about her tone made me frown, and my gut said whatever it was came from somewhere other than Nate. “What’s going on?”

She sighed. “Your grandparents and aunt have left.”

The fact that she referred to them by their relationship to me rather than to her spoke volumes. Plus, there was that sigh, the one that came when she should have been thrilled at the news. “There’s more to that story.”

“There is,” she said, “but you called to talk to me about Nate.”

“I did, but there isn’t really much else to say. We made up, and we’re going to try to take things slow. It’s a work in progress.”

“It always should be.”

“Now, your turn.”

Mom wasn’t only my closest friend. I was hers. Growing up, she’d always had a mother-daughter line, but as I’d become an adult, that line had blurred before disappearing altogether at some point. The only thing we never talked about in detail was what had happened between her and Mona, and I’d never been sure if I even wanted to know the whole truth about that.

“The other night, they all three showed up here, pretending that they wanted to apologize. They even brought dinner with them. Two minutes into the meal, though, and they were asking questions about Nate and Finley that made it even clearer that they were only here for money.”

“Fuck,” I muttered.

“Yeah, that was pretty much my thought too,” Mom said dryly. “My parents tried to be subtle about it at first, but my sister doesn’t know how to be anything but blunt.”

“Did they just expect Nate and Finley to write out a check or something? I mean, I got the whole blackmail aspect from Flora, and while that’s appalling, it at least makes sense. I guess I’m just trying to picture someone walking up to a stranger and asking them to cut a check.”

“Well, Janette wanted to know if either one donated money to colleges because her son Trenton is ‘gifted but the teachers are out to get him’ so he’s barely passing any of his classes.”

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