“There he is!” Natalie Sky-Jones, Mona’s mother came bustling into the kitchen from a different direction. “Finally! I’ve been waiting to meet you, Jack. Stand up and come over here.” I obeyed. I didn’t dare disobey. She pulled me in and hugged me as tight as I’d ever been hugged. “I’m so glad to see you. I’m proud of you.”
“Of me?” The warmth of her hug spread through me, her approval. I didn’t know I’d been looking for it.
Mona came in behind her and smirked at me, as if she’d been waiting for me to meet her mother and be overwhelmed with the warmth of her hug. Which I was.
“Of course, you! You think I don’t know what you’ve been through? And to grow up into such a strong, good man. Oh, and those photographs! So beautiful. So touching. You have a true artist’s soul.”
I shot a puzzled glance at Mona. Had she shown her mother my photos? Why would she do that in the first place? She shook her head, no. It wasn’t her.
“Mona, shame on you for not bringing your man up here sooner.” I was enjoying the slight Caribbean lilt to her words before the meaning caught up with me. Her man?
“No, Mama. You’ve got it wrong.”
“We’re not together.” We stumbled over each other trying to explain.
“He was just doing me a favor.”
“Mrs, Sky—”
“Mama . . .” she warned.
“Mama.” The mead or something tickled my stomach. “We needed someone to drive her. We’re not a couple.”
Mama looked at me—it was like she looked through me, and then, she smiled. She reached up and patted me on the cheek. “Sit. Now you eat, and I’ll have the room made up for you and Mona so you can get some rest tonight.”
“Mama. We are not a couple.”
“Sit and have some curry, Mony. We don’t have to argue about it.”
“Just because you think you have some sort of gift that makes you able to see inside of people’s hearts and know what is best for them doesn’t mean you can just maneuver them around to do what you want them to do. We’re not a couple, and you can just get used to it.”
Mama put a bowl of curry in front of me. It smelled delicious. Then, she put one in front of Mona who sat down and picked up a fork while still yelling at her mother. “This is why I left. You’re always trying to tell me what to do and think and be. Because of your gift.”
She patted Mona on the back. I watched while eating curry, which was delicious, as she bustled around Mona who she just let go on like an unwinding top until she ran out of words. It was fascinating. When Mona settled down, chewing a bite of curry with an angry glare on her face, Mama spoke again.
“You left because it was your fate.”
Mona scrunched up her nose and swallowed, getting ready to speak again.
“But you came back today with him.”
Her jaw dropped open. She looked at me, then at Mama. Then back and forth again. “My fate? Him? You think my fate is Jack? Jackass Jack?” She laughed. “My fate is not Jack.”
Mama didn’t laugh.
I wasn’t laughing either. I remembered Marissa telling me that Mona and I were a match seven years ago, and how I scoffed then. But now, I wasn’t so sure.
“My fate is not Jack.” The curls of her hair were sticking out of her ponytail, as if she were being shocked by something larger, stronger than us. “My fate is not Jack!”
Her offendedness was starting to get to me. Sure, we were always at each other’s throats, but I had thought that it was sort of in an endearing way. We loved to get under each others’ skin. It’s not like we really didn’t like each other. Or was it?
“We heard you the first five times,” I said and downed the mead. Yes, there was the honey in it, thick and rich and coating my tongue, filling my head like some sort of summer happiness that was long denied to me.
“Oh, come on. You know this is ridiculous; don’t get all delicate now, jackass.”
“I thought,” I said, and was surprised that the words came out through gritted teeth, “that you were a yoga master, and that you were all that peace and love shit. What’s the use of being a hippie if you’re just going to be . . .” I faded off. What was she being? Hurtful? Did I want her to know that she had the ability to hurt me? I was still reeling with the revelation that she had the ability to hurt me. That hadn’t been our relationship before and now, apparently, she had gotten inside my skin. But she still hated me. Crap.
Mona scoffed. “You don’t have to make up my room for us. For me. Because there is no us. And we’re not staying. I have to be back in Brooklyn tonight.”
I was pretty sure that she had been the one trying to convince me to stay the night, and I had been the one wanting to go back to town. I shut my mouth and shoveled in the curry. It was good. But it could have used some goat. Now goat curry, that was a dish I had enjoyed on my travels. But what did I expect? This was a house of vegetarians that raised my nemesis, who had stolen my heart and was eating it in place of the goat in her vegetarian curry.
“I’m putting my foot down.” Lenny came in from, yet, another doorway that I hadn’t noticed. “You two have to stay the night. A late snowstorm is coming in. You don’t want to get caught in it.”
“Ha! Like you ever put your foot down on anything, Dad. We have to get home. And we’d better get going right after we eat so we don’t get caught in your snowstorm.”
I sighed. Five more hours of driving. Or more if the weather turned.
“But we were going to play parcheesi after dinner. You love parcheesi.” Lenny sounded so sad. Mona had a hard, cold heart to be able to disappoint her dad like that. But then, I already knew Mona had a hard, cold heart. I’d clashed up against it many times before.
Mama slipped her arm around Lenny’s waist. “We can’t push them to find their fate faster than they find their fate on their own, Len. That’s just not the way it works.”
Mona nodded, firm. “I’m glad you understand.”
The clouds poured in from the east. I watched them through the skylight of that warm, hippie kitchen. What a strange place Mona came from. Suddenly, she made more sense.
Chapter Five: Mona
We hadn’t talked for three hours, not since we climbed back in the car with my mom and dad pushing homemade goat cheese and fresh baked bread on us, along with dad’s ginger beer, a jar of mead, and some roasted vegetables to snack on in the car. Mama made apple hand pies, too.
The most infuriating part was that most of their attention went to Jack. My mother kissed him on the cheek at least a dozen times. Even my father kissed him on the cheek and invited him to come back whenever he wanted. While they barely gave me a hug.
How dare my parents try to adopt Jack into our family as if he was one of those lost little lambs they’d cared for my whole life? Jack Hamilton was in no way a lost little lamb. He was a rich, powerful, pompous, gorgeous man who commanded every room he walked into, and my parents just fell right into his hands. I wanted to yell at them. What happened to fight ‘The Man, down with the system? Power to the people?’ Didn’t they realize that he was “The Man” that they’d been rebelling against their whole lives and had raised me to fight? And now, I was supposed to just, what? Cave to him? Fall into his arms and beg for him to save me? I didn’t need saving. I didn’t need Mr. Perfect Pompous Powerful man.