I found Mom in the family room seated on the chaise dressed in her usual former-beauty-queen’s-interpretation-of-loungewear attire of a dress and four-inch heels—both Prada—with her makeup and nails done and her hair styled in an updo.
I could see that she was really feeling the effects of not having a housekeeper because she was actually holding a pen and writing on a tablet herself.
“What are you doing next Saturday?” Mom asked.
“I’m busy all day and evening,” I said.
I had no idea what I was doing next Saturday, but this was safer.
“I’m having a dinner party and I want you to come,” she said, sounding surprisingly happy. “And Ty too, of course.”
I’d never gotten around to telling Mom that Ty and I had broken up.
I never got around to telling Mom a lot of things.
I saw no reason to start now.
“You’re having a dinner party?” I asked. “What about the housekeeper situation?”
No way Mom would cook or clean for her own dinner party.
“You’ve handled that,” she said, smiling brightly. “By next Saturday I’ll have had plenty of time to get the new housekeeper into my routine.”
I didn’t know which was worse—telling her I still didn’t have a housekeeper for her or that Ty and I had broken up.
I took the easy route.
“Well, actually, Mom,” I said. “Ty and I aren’t together anymore.”
“What?” She gasped. “You’re—what?”
I couldn’t bring myself to say the words again, so I just shrugged.
“Oh, Haley, honey, that’s terrible,” Mom said.
She got off the chaise and hurried to me, wrapped her arms around me, and gave me a hug.
Wow, that was nice. Maybe I should have told her we’d broken up a long time ago.
She stepped back. “What happened, sweetie?”
“We decided we weren’t really right for each other,” I said, thinking it better that I kept it simple before Mom got distracted with her dinner party again.
“Nonsense,” she declared. “You two are perfect for each other.”
“No, not really,” I said.
“Of course you were,” Mom insisted. “Those Cameron men are boring to the bone, every one of them. All they do is work, work, work. They need exciting women like you in their lives.”
Now I kind of wished she’d start talking about her dinner party again. Talking about Ty made my heart hurt.
“I guess Ty didn’t feel that way,” I said.
“Did he say he didn’t love you?” Mom asked.
Now she wants to be a concerned mother?
“No, but he never actually said he did love me,” I said.
“What’s not to love?” Mom asked, waving her carefully manicured hands toward me. “You’re pretty, you’re smart, you’re fun, you’re interesting, you’re extremely competent and capable.”
Breaking up with Ty was almost worth it to hear my mom say those things.
“He’s just being a typical man,” Mom said. “He’ll come to his senses.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think so, Mom.”
“I’ve seen you two together,” she said. “I’ve seen the way you look at him and the way he looks at you. I know love when I see it.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “We’re done.”
“You know, sometimes it takes losing someone to make you realize how much you care for that person. You see how important they are. You realize that the little things don’t matter,” Mom said. “It’s normal to disagree over the small things because you already agree on the big, important things.”
Okay, where was my real mom?
Mom gave me another hug. “Now, I want you to check your calendar for next Saturday and my dinner party. And I’ll need my new housekeeper to start right away.”
Oh, crap.
I don’t know how Mom had taken my simple comment that I needed to talk with her about a housekeeper and spun it into believing I’d found one for her.
Such were the mysterious workings of an ex–beauty queen’s mind, I guess.
But I couldn’t deal with it right now, not after that conversation about Ty.
So what could I say but, “Sure, Mom. No problem.”
I got in my car and left.
I headed west on the 210 not really thinking much about where I was going. My head was filled with the things Mom had said about relationships.
It was scary to think she might be right about something—especially something as important as this—but I knew she was.
Some people were just right for each other. Some relationships worked without an obvious, apparent reason. Were Ty and I one of those couples? I was sure other people had looked at us and wondered what we saw in each other, why we were together—I’d wondered that myself a time or two.