Twelve Months of Kristal: 50 Loving States Maine

We’d just been so intimate upstairs, but now he feels cold and distant. As far away as someone can get while standing right there.

“Ma, you’re being crazy. I’m not going to call her out of the blue!” a voice suddenly bellows on the other side of the swinging service door between the kitchen and the dining room.

“It wouldn’t be out of the blue. She’s expecting your call,” Declan’s Irish mother, Maeve, calls over her shoulder, her heavily-accented voice testy as she comes bustling out with a silver tray in her hand. “Oh, there you two are!”

She raises the tray towards Hayato and me. “I was just after bringing this up to your room. But you can eat down here if you prefer.”

“We prefer the room,” Hayato answers before I can tell her that down here is totally fine.

I frown at him, trying to figure out why he’d rather eat in our cramped room, which doesn’t even have a table, than in the wide-open dining room.

But before I can point that out, Declan comes out of the kitchen asking, “Why would she be waiting for my call? I haven’t spoken to her in years.”

“I know, more’s the pity. I told her it was right time we fixed that when I texted her on that pretty new phone you got me. Thank you for that, by the way, a leanbh. It’s so big and easy to use, just as you promised. I never could figure out how to send a proper text on that old flip of mine.”

“And this is how you repay me?” Declan asks with a murderous look. “By texting my ex-girlfriend on the phone I got you for Christmas?”

“Well, what else did you expect me to do with it?” Maeve asks, blinking at him as if her actions upon receiving the phone were a natural conclusion.

“I don’t know. Watch YouTube? Not start up a correspondence with the girl who broke my heart!”

She tosses her head. “Oh, go on, it was high school. And just remember, you were the one who left for the soldier’s life. You could not and should not have expected a smart lass like that to remain waiting for you, especially without a ring. What is she, then? Odysseus’s dog? You reckon she should have stayed pining for you by the sea while you traipsed all over.”

“If by traipsed all over, you mean defended my country as a Marine—”

“I mean going off to Jim knows where without any calls. Leaving her to wonder if she’d ever be hearing from you again.”

Declan jerks, like his tiny mother punched him. “She said that?” he asks.

But before she can answer, he shakes his head and says, “She shouldn’t be talking to you about me. About us.”

“But who else would she talk to about it?” Declan’s mother asks. “Those parents of hers still aren’t talking to her since her divorce from that insurance broker she never should’ve married in the first place. They’re still strict Catholics, you know, even after all the boy touching. And her other same-age friends have children and lives of their own—”

“What the hell, Ma. How long have you been talking to her behind my back?” Declan demands.

Maeve folds her arms over her ample bosom. “If me talking to her bothers you so much, you should ring her yourself as I told her you would.”

“I’m not calling her! You should have never said I would because that’s not happening in a thousand years.”

“Fine!” Maeve answers, dropping the tray onto the buffet with a clattering bang. “If you are unwilling to call Siobhan, a lass you never had any business letting go in the first place, then I’m not going to the doctor with you tomorrow.”

“You’re blackmailing me now?” Declan explodes. “I got Rodge to agree to clear the old access road just so we could make it to the clinic to get the referral.”

“Well, you shouldn’t have bothered. Do you think I have anything to live for if my only son refuses to give me grandchildren?”

“Ma, stop talking crazy!” Declan shouts. I notice several veins on his neck straining as he points out, “I came all the way out here on my boss’s jet. With a friggin’ elf!”

Maeve sniffs and turns to Hayato and me. “I am very sorry for wasting your time, dearies,” she says. “Perhaps if my son weren’t so stubborn—”

“If I wasn’t so stubborn!” Declan yells, his face redder than Santa’s leather jacket.

“Guys, guys, please stop yelling,” I say, holding up both of my hands. “It’s okay. You didn’t waste our time. In fact, if Santa were here, he’d say we only have to put our heads together to come up with a good solution. Right, Hayato?”

I look to Hayato for a little backup. But instead of answering. He walks away. Just walks away.