Coda Books 06 - Fear, Hope, and Bread Pudding (MM)

back of her head, frowning. She’d continued to wear her hair down, but it was as if now she was searching for the tight knot it normally lived in. She seemed confused not to find it there.
    “Grace?”
    She sighed and sat down in the same chair she’d sat in on Christmas day. She hid her face from me by staring at her lap.
    “I screwed up, George.”
    “We all screw up—”
    “No, I mean this week. He made an effort, and I threw it back in his face.”
    I thought over the couple of days we’d had together before the boys had flown home. It hadn’t gone as smoothly as I had hoped, but I still wasn’t sure what exactly she was referring to. “When?”
    “The bread pudding.”
    “Because you don’t like it?”
    “There’s more to it than that.” She sniffed and wiped her eyes. Once again, I hadn’t realized she was crying. She was good at hiding it. “Remember I told you about skiing in Vail?”
    “Yes.”
    “There was a lodge on the mountain, and we’d go there to warm up in the middle of the day when we started to get tired. And we’d always have bread pudding and hot chocolate.”
    “So he made it to remind you of the good times?”
    “Yes.”
    “And you pushed it away.”
    “Yes.”
    “Wow.”
    “I told you I screwed up.”
    “You’re not kidding.”
    “I was so angry about the nanny thing, and so hurt, and I saw a chance to hurt him back, and I took it.” She looked up at me. Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Why did I do that?”
    “Probably for the same reason he made the nanny comment. The two of you work in cycles, hurting each other and then blaming each other. The only way it stops is for one of you to do the right thing.”
    “I wanted to, but there was the present. He didn’t like it—”
    “He was caught off guard.”
    “And the thing about inadequate parents—”
    “He was right, you know. You said it. Not him.”
    “He didn’t deny it.”
    I sighed in frustration. “You didn’t get the validation you needed, so you decided not to give him any either?”
    She shrugged in defeat. “I guess so.”
    “Well, that’s ridiculous. It’s selfish and childish and just plain stupid.” She blinked at me, stunned at my bluntness. I knew it hurt. She’d wanted sympathy, but I was done with that. Sympathy was for people who had lost their children through no fault of their own. She and I had no claim to it. “Nobody ever said being a parent was easy, and if they did, they obviously didn’t have children. He hurt your feelings. So what? Get over it. That’s part of raising a child. That’s part of being a parent.”
    “We’ve already established that I was never a very good mother.”
    “Then stop repeating your behavior and be one now. The two of you can go round and round forever trying to decide who’s to blame, or you— you , Grace, and you alone—can be the adult. You can be the one to say, ‘Enough’.”
    She swallowed hard. “What about him? What’s going to stop him from repeating the cycle?”
    “Cole’s a good man. Eccentric and fruity, but good. It’ll take a bit of time, but if you give him the benefit of the doubt and make an honest effort to fix things, he’ll eventually give it back.”
    “Do you really think so?”
    “I do.”
    She thought about it for a bit. I thought that was a good sign. It would have been easy to say the words, to pronounce that this was the day everything would change. But to follow through? That would require effort and more than a little patience. I admired her for taking the situation as seriously as she did, and for thinking about what her commitment would really mean.
    Finally, she looked up at me. She wasn’t crying anymore, but she was obviously scared to death. “I don’t want my son to hate me, George. Tell me what I need to do.”
    I reached out and took her hand. “We’ll make it work.”
    One down.
    One to go.

Part Three:

Hope

Chapter Six

    T HE trip home was a blur. Cole had been in such a hurry to get us on a flight that he hadn’t stopped to think about layovers and connections, which meant it took us even longer than usual. He checked his watch constantly, and by the time we landed in Phoenix, he was crankier than he’d been in ages. He was worried the delay would cost us our first shot at adoption, so I did my best not to take him seriously. After sleeping only a few short hours in our own bed, we were up again and out the door. I was still reeling from jet lag when I took my seat