Page 131 of A Dream for Daphne

It wasn’t said carelessly. Just stating a truthful fact.

“You never wanted to be friends,” her mother said.

She sighed. There was no getting her mother to understand that they weren’t friends. It was a parent-child relationship.

But her parents were more interested in going out and having fun than they were about anything else.

She’d bet if she agreed and went along with her parents to their parties her life would be different.

She didn’t want to be like that. She didn’t want to go out multiple times a week, waste her money on booze and recreational drugs, then get up and go to work feeling like crap.

She wanted to grow up and be an adult. Her parents were still stuck in their twenties mentally. That was it, plain and simple, and they couldn’t understand why their children weren’t like that.

Just because her parents held down jobs and paid their bills, most times, they thought they were responsible adults.

In some people’s eyes, maybe they were.

But they weren’t responsible parents.

“Mom,” she said. “I’ve got friends. I need a mother and father in my life.”

Her mother snorted. “You never had that many friends.”

They were outside right now at Mona’s. The reception was still going on but winding down. Her mother came out to smoke a cigarette off to the side. Her father was at the bar.

“I had friends,” she argued. “But I put work first. Just like I’m doing here.”

“That isn’t a good way to keep a boyfriend,” her mother said. “But it seems like you got lucky with him owning that business and all. If you get to see him much. I bet he works more than you.”

“We see each other plenty enough,” she said. “We get along great. It’s only been about three months.”

“But you’re getting up there in age,” her mother said, smiling.

She rolled her eyes. She wanted to change the topic. “You look very pretty in your dress.”

“Thank you,” her mother said of a navy fitted dress that fell to the floor. It had lace over the top of it. She wasn’t sure she’d ever seen her mother in a dress before.

Nor her father in a suit, but both of her parents did look the part. They even acted it last night at the rehearsal dinner too.

She wasn’t sure what she expected of them or their visit, but they were on their best behavior it seemed.

When the bill came for the dinner, Aster took care of it, not her parents. She didn’t expect any differently either.

But her mother and father were very nice and sweet to Raine and her family. She couldn’t ask for much more but hated that she felt as if some hammer was going to drop on her too.

It wasn’t like her parents to be this way. Unless it was because there was so much distance now that she had more tolerance for them. Or maybe she was just looking at them in a different light.

Nah, she knew them for who they were.

Not horrible people, just not the nice tidy family she would have liked growing up.

Nothing like Abe had.

“Did you pick your dress out yourself or go shopping with friends?”

Her mother almost always did things with friends. Never alone.

“Didi and I went together. I hadn’t realized how expensive dresses were. We got it on sale though. I’ll never wear it again. At least Dad might get use out of his suit again.”

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