“Wow, Mom,” I said. “This is quite the feast.”
“Oh, it’s just a little something. Sit down and help yourself.”
I wasn’t that hungry, but I took a plate and put some of the fruit salad on it and a croissant, since it was mostly air.
“Declan is very excited about going to LEGOLAND,” my mother said. She looked at him. “I’ve never been there before.”
“I haven’t either,” Declan said. “Do you like LEGOs?”
“I haven’t played with them much, I must admit. But I am very much looking forward to going to LEGOLAND and finding out more about them!”
I tried to hide my surprised expression by taking a bite out of the croissant, which was very good. I couldn’t remember my mother taking such an interest in a child, other than myself when I was younger, but even then, I had always felt like she was half-distracted, thinking about something else.
Declan finished eating his fruit salad and slid off his chair.
“Hey, don’t go too far, buddy,” Cole said. “We’re almost done here.”
“Oh, you two take your time. I’ll give Declan the tour,” Mom said, dropping her linen napkin next to her plate. “Do you play the piano, Declan?”
“No,” he said.
“Would you like to give it a try? We’ve got a piano in the living room that no one has played in... well, it’s been a very long time.”
“Do you play it? Can you teach me a song?”
“I might still remember ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb,’” my mother said. She gave us a Mary Poppins grin as she followed Declan out of the room.
I set my croissant down and stared after them. “Have I stepped into some sort of parallel universe?” I asked.
Cole looked at me, then looked toward the living room where they’d just disappeared to. “She’s really good with kids,” he said. “I see where you get it from.”
“Um... yeah, I guess. This is kind of a new development.”
“Really? That doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing that you could just fake. Kids are good are sniffing that sort of thing out. Anyway, Declan is already having a blast.” He reached over and touched my hand. “And what about you...how’d it go?”
“He actually apologized.”
“He did?”
“Yes.”
“Wow. I mean, it’s shit that he tried to do that in the first place, but it’s good of him to apologize.”
“Apparently, my mother never even brought it up to him in the first place, even though she’d told me on the phone that she had. I think she was afraid if she had, he would’ve admitted to it, and then she wouldn’t know what to do. Isn’t that messed up? Is my family way more messed up than I thought they were?”
“Probably not,” Cole said. “Or, rather, every family’s messed up in some way.”
“Your family doesn’t seem to be,” I said, but then I remembered his sister, how sad his mother had been.
I was just finishing my croissant when my mother and Declan came back into the dining room.
“So,” my mother said, “everything taste okay?”
I nodded. “It’s delicious.”
“And do we know how to get to LEGOLAND?”
“I’m not sure where it is,” I said. I reached for my phone and looked it up. “Um...” I looked up at my mom. “Did you know it’s in Somerville?”