Page 6 of The Master

I appreciated the gesture despite my lack of appetite, and I wasn’t going to hurt Tiffany’s feelings by refusing them, so I poured some ketchup on the plate and dunked one of the extra crispy fries before popping it into my mouth. Manny was an amazing cook, and I could enjoy the taste at least. Besides, I needed to eat, even if I didn’t want to. I’d hadn’t been eating much all week, not unless I had other people around, and I wanted to pretend that everything was normal.

What was normal, anyway? I’d been raised in a home that a lot of people still wouldn’t considernormal, but I wouldn’t trade my mom for any other parent out there.

My phone rang, startling me enough that I almost didn’t check to see who was calling. A wave of relief went through me when I saw my mom’s picture.

“Mom, thank goodness. I was getting worried.”

“Sorry about that, dear.”

I frowned. She sounded off. Absent. As if her mind was elsewhere. “Are you almost here? I can have Tiffany get your usual drink ready.”

“Oh, um, no thanks, sweetie. I won’t be able to make it today.”

It took me a few seconds to process what she’d said, but it still didn’t make sense. I felt an invisible hand squeezing my heart, and questions came out in a rush. “What do you mean you won’t be able to make it? Are you okay? Did something happen? Is it work again? Shouldn’t your professor have you come in on weekdays? Like office hours or something?”

She sighed. “Relax, dear. I’m okay.”

I didn’t believe her. “Mom–”

“I’m fine, but I can’t meet you today,” she said more firmly. “I have to go now, but I’ll talk to you soon.”

She ended the call before I could say anything else, leaving me staring at the phone in disbelief. In my entire life, Mom had never hung up on me. I was half-tempted to call her back, but I didn’t want to make a big deal about it if it really was nothing more than her being busy and distracted.

Then again, if it was something important that she just didn’t want to tell me because it wasn’t good news, I needed to know it. Scenarios began running through my head, all the things that could be bad enough for her not to want to tell me. Her cancer was back. Something else was wrong with her health. She’d lost her job. Her insurance had been canceled. She was losing our home.

I shook my head, trying to clear it before I drove myself nuts, but it didn’t help. I needed a compromise. A text. She wouldn’t have to talk to me, and she could answer in her own time. That would work.

You sounded really weird and hung up before I could say anything. I know you said you’re fine, but something feels off. What’s going on? You don’t have to call or answer right away, but I need you to tell me something more than “I’m fine.”

I wanted to remind her that we’d promised we wouldn’t keep secrets, but even though I could argue that not telling her about Nate and me was simply because I wanted to do it face-to-face, I had just recently admitted to lying for years about finding my biological father. It would’ve felt more than a little hypocritical to criticize her for keeping some personal matters to herself.

Whatever her reason and whatever she was hiding, she and I would hash it out. Because that’s what adults did. They talked to each other like rational human beings and came to logical conclusions. At least that’s what I thought adults should do. But, as my judgment of character wasn’t as good as I thought it was, I supposed my assumptions about adult behavior could also be off.

Fucking Nate Lexington.

Five

Nate

My family knewsomething was up with Ashlee and me. No one else had asked about her after I’d told Catherine and Jacob that she hadn’t been able to come to the party, but I’d caught some of them giving me sideways glances when they thought I wasn’t looking. I supposed the looks could have been the general distrust that I was still working to dispel, but Mom and Julia had been giving them to me too, and I hadn’t sensed anything negative coming from them.

The worst part about it was that, if they all did figure out that Ashlee and I had broken up, they could think I deserved it after everything I’d done. They wouldn’t be wrong. Even though Joshua now knew that my actions had been idiotic but mostly well-intentioned, rather than malicious, he had to be taking at least a little pleasure in the fact that I’d lost someone I clearly cared about.

As much as I wanted to keep pretending that things with Ashlee had been all about sex, I was tired of the deception. Allowing my true feelings for Ashlee to come to the surface, however, only made things worse.

My anger toward her had grown the more I’d acknowledged how I felt about her. She’d thrown away everything we’d had for nothing more than some sort of petty jealousy.

I was still trying to justify my choices and subsequent behavior when Finley walked into my office without knocking. One look at his face told me that my normally mild-mannered friend was upset about something, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to guess who it was about.

“What’s going on with you and Ashlee?”

A forceful, blunt approach wasn’t his normal way of handling issues and startled me enough to make me want to confirm I’d heard him correctly. “What?”

“I talked to Roberta on Saturday, and she’s worried about Ashlee. Quite frankly, I am too. She’s been acting strangely at work.”

“What did Ashlee tell her mom?” I asked cautiously. I knew Ashlee and Roberta talked to each other about everything, so I could only imagine what Roberta thought had happened.

I felt a little stab of guilt for assuming that Ashlee hadn’t been entirely honest with her mother about that last night, but I pushed it away. Everyone saw things through their own biases and experiences. It’s why gossip so often didn’t resemble the truth it came from.

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