Haley wondered what Carolyn might be saying about her, but she wasn’t going to worry about it. “Sorry I lectured them when they were making fun of you. I tried to keep quiet, but they were starting to annoy me, ganging up on you that way.”
“It’s okay. I appreciated you taking up for me. But I’m used to it.”
“They were out of line.”
He shrugged. “They had some justification for the things they said. I did start and stop a lot of things in the past. Even college, the first time. You can’t really blame them for expecting me to quit this, too.”
“After four years of college and two and a half years of med school? I’d say you’ve proven you’re sticking with it this time.”
He shrugged. “That’s the plan. Unless something goes wrong, of course.”
She sighed. “You want to hear some armchair psychoanalysis?”
He chuckled in response to her wording, though he kept his eyes focused on the wet road ahead. “Sure. Go ahead.”
“I think one reason you kept quitting things is because you never thought you could do them well enough. Your parents are so critical that you could be forgiven for thinking you could never please them. It wouldn’t take much to expand that mind-set to thinking you might as well not invest too much of yourself if you couldn’t win, anyway.”
“Hmm.”
She couldn’t tell if he agreed, disagreed, or was just humoring her. “Well?”
“Well, what?”
“Could my theory be at least somewhat credible?”
“There’s some truth in it.”
“Your mother probably has OCD, you know.”
“My mother definitely has OCD. I’ve known that for years.”
“Oh.” Only a little deflated, she said, “You didn’t mention it.”
“I told you she’s impossible to please.”
“Well, yes, but not that it’s partially because she can’t really help herself.”
“Took me a few years to figure that out.”
A hard gust of wind buffeted the car. She saw Ron’s hands tighten on the wheel.
“Why don’t you turn on the radio?” he suggested. “We really should be listening to the weather reports.”
Rain swept in curtains across the road ahead as she reached for the knob. “It seems to be getting worse again, doesn’t it?”
“Picking up some.”
A somber male voice read weather updates on the airways. Haley frowned a little. It sounded as though the system was moving quickly in from the west. The western half of the state was under a new tornado watch. “Hope we get home before that gets to Little Rock.”
“Me, too. If we have to, we’ll pull over somewhere. Have a leisurely dinner while we wait for it to blow over.”
She nodded. “Not that I’m hungry yet. Your mom made so much food.”
“She’ll complain for days about how tired she is from all that work. But she seemed to enjoy having us there.”
“I think she did.”
“She liked you, Haley. I could tell.”