Jennifer Greene - Little Matchmakers

She peeled off the slicker and shoes, exchanged the rest of her clothes in the bedroom for a long robe, grabbed a brush and started tracking down her son.

Likely he’d be near either a TV or computer screen, but that hardly limited the possibilities. Her bungalow was built in the old-fashioned Southern style, with all rooms having a window view, and storage located in the windowless center of the place. The back side—the woods and mountain sides—had her bedroom, a den/TV room and Pete’s bedroom, which she checked first.

His sanctuary had walls of cracked pine, with a built-in desk and shelves. Unlike her bedroom, Pete’s bed was tidily made and his clothes put away. The only noise in the room came from a pair of hamsters, furiously running their wheels. She spotted Pete’s bare feet propped on the bed, but she had to lean over the bed to find the rest of her son. Petie was nestled in a down comforter on the floor, reading from a Kindle.

“Well, if this isn’t petrifying,” she said. “Is the sky falling? Your laptop’s shut down. The TV’s off.”

“Mom. There was some thunder. I had to turn everything off.” Behind glasses too dirty to see, Petie’s eyes looked hopelessly mournful.

“But it looks like you found a book to read.” She perched on the bed, resisted the urge to tickle his feet.

“Actually, it’s boring. And how come Mr. MacKinnon came over, anyway?”

She was ready for the question. “We were trying to think up a plan to torture you and his Will.”

“If you can’t think up a better story than that, I’m going back to my book.”

“I’m serious! We came up with the idea that you and Will might like to trade places for a couple afternoons.”

Pete marked the spot in his Kindle and shut down. Now his eyes were suspicious. “Why would we want to do that?”

“Because summer vacations are fun. But they can also be boring.”

He crossed his skinny arms. “Mom, I’m about never bored. You know that.”

“I do. But Mr. MacKinnon has a gorgeous spot on top of the mountain. There’s a lake up there. Cliffs—”

“I know. We had a field trip there a couple years ago. It’s pretty awesome.”

“That’s what I thought—”

Pete interrupted her. “Just tell me straight. Is this one of your schemes to make me ‘go outside and have fun’?”

She tried to think of a way to color up the truth. Couldn’t think of any. “Sort of,” she had to admit.

Petie emitted one of his old-soul’s sighs. “Listen. You need me. If I’m not here, you can’t find your car keys. And you put the milk in the cupboard. And sometimes you forget it’s dinnertime. And sometimes you need me to help with the plants and stuff.”

“That’s all true. I do need you. And you’re wonderful at being responsible and taking care of things,” Garnet agreed. “But that’s not a lot of fun for you.”

“Mom. I don’t know why you can’t get it. I have fun all the time. It’s just not noisy fun.” He sighed again. “This is about something Mrs. Riddle said to you, isn’t it? She says I never cause trouble. She says it’s not natural. So she got you all worried that you’re not a great mother, right?”

It scared her. If he could out-think her at age ten, how could she possibly cope when he was a teenager? “Not exactly.”

“Okay. We’ll go through this again. You’re a great mom. Even if you forget and put the peanut butter in the fridge. Even if you dance around like a goon when you’re making cookies. But this is like when Grandma and Grandpa call. You get all upset. You start scrubbing floors. You gotta quit listening to other people. Listen to me.”

“Peter. Sometimes you need to remember that I’m the parent, and you’re the kid. Sometimes I actually know a little more about life than you do.”

“When?”

“Hey. That wasn’t funny. It was mean.”

He rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Okay, okay. I’ll go over to Mr. MacKinnon’s if you want me to. It’s not like it’s terrible there. He’s a good guy and all.” His tone conveyed that he was caving, but she’d better realize she was going to owe him forever for agreeing to this.

“I just want you to try it a couple of times. See if you like the setup there. That’s all I’m asking. For you to check it out.”

“Okay, okay. I said I would.”

She escaped while she was ahead, aimed for the kitchen and the end-of-the-day cleanup. There wasn’t much. Crumbs here, a quick sweep, a couple glasses to pop in the dishwasher, and last, scouring the sink. Garnet knew perfectly well she was the worst housekeeper in the universe, so heaven knew how she’d picked up an obsession about a clean sink, but there it was. Another character flaw.

By the time the sink had a blinding gleam, her mind had skidded back to Tucker. How she felt around him. How she didn’t want to feel. How every single thing that happened today had been … unsettling.

MacKinnons were blue blood in this part of the country. So was her family … but not her. She was plain vanilla all the way, went to bed with the first boy who asked her, got instantly pregnant, married Johnny because she was wildly in love with him—but he chose to fight in the Middle East rather than live with her. She wasn’t just an underachiever in her family.

She was the one who always made the wrong choices.

Tucker, with his background, had understandably been attracted to—and married—a sorority girl from Ole Miss. So the marriage hadn’t worked out. Eventually he’d find another woman with the beauty and grace and class of a traditional Southern belle, because that’s what MacKinnons did.

And Garnet would still be working in the dirt, struggling to make an ordinary living, to just raise her son and do a good job at it.

Nothing wrong with that.

But she’d made enough bad judgments. Her heart was impulsive and unpredictable. Her life had gone much, much easier since she’d just kind of abandoned men. And that resolve hadn’t changed just because she had a major zing thing for Tucker.

She’d had zings before. They always turned out wrong.

A razor-sharp blade of lightning knifed the sky, followed by an angry growl of thunder … as if she needed a reminder that she and nature didn’t always get along.

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