“I know,” she said. “I’ll find out.”
He ended the call and stood there until the bakery’s motion light blinked off, leaving him in the half-dark.
The next morning, Tessa woke to the smell of coffee and the sound of someone moving quietly in her kitchen.
For one wild second, she thought it was Nolan. Then she remembered she had locked the door, and that Nolan, for all his sins, had not yet escalated to breaking and entering with breakfast.
She reached for the baseball bat she kept under the bed anyway.
When she stepped into the living room, bat raised, her mother looked up from the kitchen counter.
Evelyn Monroe wore a raincoat over her church cardigan and an expression of severe disapproval that could curdle milk. Her silver hair was pinned with military precision. A paper grocery bag sat beside her, filled with oranges, bread, and the particular brand of jam Caleb liked but pretended not to care about.
“You changed the spare key location,” Evelyn said.
Tessa lowered the bat. “Because reporters are camping outside.”
“I noticed. One of them asked if I was Nolan Vale’s secret first wife.”
“What did you say?”
“That I would rather lick a bus pole.”
Despite the morning, despite everything, Tessa smiled.
Evelyn’s gaze moved over her face, taking inventory with the ruthless tenderness only mothers possessed. “You look awful.”
“Good morning to you too.”
“I brought groceries.”
“I see that.”
“And I came because my grandson is on television speaking like a retired judge, and because your name is in the papers, and because Nolan Vale has apparently returned from the land of men who confuse money with absolution.”
Tessa leaned the bat against the wall. “Coffee?”
“I already made it. Yours is weak.”
“It’s coffee, Mom, not a moral test.”
“Everything is a moral test if people are paying attention.”
Caleb appeared from the hallway moments later, hair flattened on one side, eyes bright at the sight of her.
“Grandma.”
Evelyn’s sternness softened instantly. “There he is.”
He allowed himself to be hugged, though he counted silently under his breath the way he did when affection exceeded his preferred duration. Evelyn released him at nine seconds. Tessa noticed. Caleb noticed too.
“I brought jam,” Evelyn said.
“The good kind?”
“The expensive kind.”
Caleb nodded gravely. “I appreciate your sacrifice.”
Evelyn patted his cheek. Then her gaze shifted toward the telescope parts neatly arranged near the window. “That his?”
Caleb’s expression changed. “Nolan’s. But I assembled it.”
“With help,” Tessa said.
“With interference,” Caleb corrected.
Evelyn looked at Tessa.
The question hung there without being spoken.
Tessa busied herself with mugs. “He’s trying.”
Evelyn’s mouth tightened. “Men try when the trying has an audience.”
“This audience is pretty hostile.”
“All the more reason to perform.”
Caleb looked between them. “If this becomes a coded adult conversation, please announce the subject so I can decide whether to leave.”
Evelyn sighed. “The subject is whether Nolan Vale deserves access to your life.”
“Ah.” Caleb climbed onto a stool. “That is under review.”
“So I heard.”
He studied her. “Do you dislike him?”
Evelyn’s hands stilled on the grocery bag.
Tessa’s spine stiffened. Aaron’s name sat in the room like an unseen guest.
“I dislike what he did,” Evelyn said at last.
“That was not my question.”
“No,” Evelyn agreed. “It wasn’t.”
Tessa expected her mother to evade. Evelyn Monroe was a master of shutting grief into drawers and labeling them duty.
Instead, Evelyn sat across from Caleb.
“I loved Nolan once,” she said.
Tessa looked at her sharply.
Evelyn did not look back. Her eyes stayed on Caleb. “He was at my table more than he was at his own. He and Aaron ate everything in my refrigerator and lied badly about it. He fixed the back steps without being asked. He drove your mother to school in a car that sounded like it was full of spoons. He was brilliant and hungry and I thought maybe, if the world was kind, he would become someone good.”
Caleb listened, very still.
“And then?” he asked.
“And then the world was not kind,” Evelyn said. “And Nolan decided that meant he did not have to be.”
Tessa felt the words in her bones.
Caleb’s gaze dropped to his hands. “Can people become good later?”
Evelyn’s face changed, and for a moment she looked older than Tessa had ever seen her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “But I have lived long enough to know some people become sorry.”
Caleb nodded slowly. “Those are not the same.”
“No,” Evelyn said. “They are not.”
A knock sounded at the door.
Everyone froze.
Tessa moved first, checking the security camera feed on her phone. Nolan stood in the hallway, wearing yesterday’s exhaustion under a fresh shirt and holding a paper bag from the bakery downstairs. Beside him stood a security guard pretending not to hear anything.
Tessa looked at her mother.
Evelyn’s expression cooled by ten degrees.
Caleb slid off the stool and went to the door before Tessa could stop him.
“Caleb,” she warned.