Cara spotted the man in question, taking in the nightly financial report on the small flat screen embedded in his fridge. “How much?” She finally interrupted the monologue.
“Well, I declare I thought it was some kinda joke, or he had a hidden camera or somethin’, you know?”
“How much?”
“Well, it’s embarrassing. You know I don’t like talkin’ about money, since we ain’t never had a pot to piss in thanks to your no-account daddy.”
“Mama, I’m walking into the kitchen now and asking him myself.”
“No, no, don’t go embarrassing that fine man for what he done for me. You’re actin’ like the spoiled brat you always was.” Her mother’s tone dipped into childish petulance, reminding her of endless nights spent playing mother as a teenager to the woman while she bitched about the loser boyfriend of the moment maxing out her credit cards or making off with the rent money she had stowed in the mattress. “You are one lucky so-and-so, Miss Priss Cara Elizabeth. You’d better do all you can to keep your looks and make that man the best wife possible, you hear me? Don’t you go shamin’ how you was raised.”
Cara sighed and had to swallow the bile rising in her throat. How she was raised, had been something she’d shared completely with her future, silver-spoon-enabled husband. She couldn’t be accused of leading him on about her poor white trailer-trash background. No way. He’d claimed not to care and every time he saw her mother, he acted like the perfect gentlemen—going overboard at times with his attention to her. It sickened Cara, but she’d get almost faint with gratitude whenever he’d do it.
But giving the woman money? That Cara would not tolerate.
“All right, Mama, all right, relax.” She cracked a yawn, sticking out her tongue at Kent when he pointed to the phone then circled his finger around his ear. They’d have to discuss the money. She wouldn’t let her mother sponge off him. The prospect of conversations with her future mother-in-law over it made her want to scream because sure as the sun would rise tomorrow, Vivian Lowery would find out somehow.
But not until after the wedding, and the honeymoon, she thought, ignoring her mother’s yammering. The honeymoon Cara had requested—not to some expensive beach resort that required her to buy a passport, but to a cabin in the Smokey Mountains. She’d been there once as a kid, with the Love family, in her days as another urchin taken under Miss Lindsay’s wing, when Cara and Kieran were nothing but pre-adolescents fighting over the Monopoly board, or who got to paddle the back of the canoe.
The ten-day trip had imprinted on her young psyche as indelibly as a burning brand on her flesh. It had been utterly perfect—Love family dynamics, fights, drama, laughter, and all. She wanted to go there. So Kent had arranged it to her specifications, as closely as he could manage, since she couldn’t remember the name of the place and could hardly call Lindsay and ask her. Cabins in the Smokey Mountains by a Lake abounded, it would seem.
Returning to the present, Cara gazed out the large window onto the Ohio River and the Albany, Indiana skyline beyond, her mother’s irritating voice filling her ear without making an impression on her consciousness.
“I’m gonna go. Kent is...he’s got dinner and I’m....” She winced. She’d just set herself up for another shriek and a lecture about who was taking care of whom and her role as a wife and all sorts of nonsense that would make her laugh from the irony if she were not so sick of hearing it. “Bye, now. Bye-bye, see you Sunday. Yes, I love you. Bye!” She touched the end call button to head off the burst of emotion her mother always managed to spew at the end of every call, as if they were departing for opposite ends of the planet, never to meet again.
“So sorry, babe.” Kent carried her plate into the room on a TV tray, plunked it down in front of the couch, and went to grab his. “She insisted on talking to you. It sounded serious.” He patted the couch next to him before tucking the linen napkin into the open neck of his dress shirt.
“It’s never as serious as she makes it out to be. You know that.” Strange whoosh-whoosh sounds filled Cara’s ears, in time with her heartbeat, which had increased during the call. “Why did you give her money?”
He pointed the clicker at the giant television over the stone mantel then went to work on his steak. He cut a bite, stuffed it in his mouth, chewed, swallowed, and wiped his lips, ignoring her question in the process.
“Honey,” she said, her voice a bit sharper than she’d intended. His gaze darkened and he set his utensils down. The man made better use of a pregnant pause than anyone she knew. Probably what made him such a good litigator, she supposed. Prepared to wait him out, she matched his silence. She’d asked, so he owed her an answer.