Page 34 of Love Is Brewing

“That and our weak spots along with our strong ones. She’s the best. And since she lives an hour from here, I see her the most.”

Not by choice.

Normally his mother was doing her surprise visits to him while he was at work.

She’d check out the brewery, find him on the floor, and then make him take a break for lunch.

He always struggled to tell her no and Aileen Carlisle knew the important traits of her kids to play them well.

“My mother is the same way,” she said. “She knows the right things to say when. I want to say it’s part of her job, but then I realized it’s more being a mother. As busy as she was and as hard as she worked, she put us kids first for years.”

“Good for her,” he said. “Not every woman does that with a career.”

He was eying her to see what her reply would be to that.

“Are you asking me what I’ll do?” she asked, sipping her beer.

“Sure,” he said. “What are your thoughts of family, kids, and careers? Kind of early for that type of conversation, but let’s get it out there.”

He turned to check on the burgers and spun the pan around, then got out the pasta salad to put on the island.

“I’d like to have children someday. Not eight of them. Not even three.”

“I don’t think anyone in my family plans on having eight kids like my mother did. Hell, my mother’s brother has nine kids. A couple of sets of multiples in there, but still.” He shivered over the appalling thought of sleepless nights for so long.

“Not to insult anyone. But nine kids?Are they nuts?”

“My Uncle Austin owns a pretty big law firm in Florida. I don’t know, do you think he’s nuts?”

She laughed. “I’m pleading the fifth on that. How many of those kids are attorneys?”

“Right now,” he said. “None that I know of. One is still in college. I don’t keep track of too much of their lives or careers.”

It was hard enough for him to keep track of his own siblings.

“Who has time?” she asked.

“But I’m going to make time to keep track of you,” he said. “If you’re willing to do the same.”

“And miss baked burgers and boxed pasta salad?” she asked. “Do I look like a person who’d say no to that?”

He wanted to say yes, she did look it.

But she didn’t act it and it was good enough for him.

12

WEAR A PAIR OF JEANS WELL

“What’s this I hear you had a date?”

“When?” Phoebe asked her mother the next day. Her mother blurted that question out before she even could say hi.

“On Friday,” her mother said. “Or is there another time you had one?”

Since she didn’t have a lot of people to talk to about this, she might as well use her mother as a sounding board.

“I had another yesterday.”

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