Page 19 of Knot the Plan
I've thought about those twenty minutes more than I'd ever say out loud, to Gus, to my mother, to her. I've also decided, more than once, that it didn't mean anything. Somebody's kind to you in a closet, you remember it. That's all it is. That's all I let it be.
And when my mother's voice came down the hall, Josie slipped out and pulled the door not-quite-shut behind her. Through the gap, I watched her lie.
Worst lie I've ever heard. Voice up two octaves. Ears red as a hydrant. Something about a sensory table that didn't exist. My mother, who can smell a fib through drywall, tilted her head, looked at this small omega vibrating with dishonesty, and decided to let it stand.
To this day I don't fully know why. I think it might've been mercy. I think they might've understood each other in some language I don't speak.
Anyway. I owe her. “Anything, name it,” I said, like an idiot, drunk on freedom and felt-glue fumes.
The woman waited two months and named the one thing. And I said no, fast, before the part of me that wanted to say yes could get its boots on. Told myself it was about my mother. The lie. The principle of the thing. Told myself a lot of things.
The phone rings at four. I know before I look. There's a specific dread.
“Hi, Mom.”
“Finnegan.” Clippers going in the background. Salon noise. Which means I'm on speaker, which means whoever's in the chair is now part of this. “Don't make plans for the second Saturday of July.”
“What's the second Saturday of July.”
“Marie Hartley's niece is coming through town.” A pause. Weighted. Professional. The woman could land a plane with her pauses. “An omega, Finn. Works in veterinary pharmaceuticals. She raises those dogs, the clever ones.”
“I'm working that Saturday.”
“You don't know which Saturday it is.”
“I work all of them.”
“That,” my mother says, “is exactly the problem.”
Her voice changes. Salon-bright to just-us quiet, even with half the town in her chairs.
“You're thirty-two, sweetheart. You work, you fix that truck, you come to dinner once a week and you look at your phone twice the whole meal. I'm not trying to run your life.”
“You're trying a little.”
“I'm trying a medium amount, and you know why?” The clippers stop. “Because your sister at least pretends she's looking, and that buys her a year at a time. You won't even pretend. A mother can take a lot of things, Finn, but watching her boy build a life with nobody in it is not going to be one of them. The Hartley girl will be at the Tipsy Berry on the eighth. Seven o'clock. Wear the blue shirt.”
She hangs up. She always hangs up first. Tactical.
I stand in the engine bay holding a phone and a wrench, and I can see exactly how the rest of the year goes. The Hartley girl on the eighth. Whoever it is at the Huckleberry Festival. The visiting cousins, the friends of friends, the setups. My mother's face going hopeful and then, when it doesn't take, going quiet. Over and over. Every month. Forever.
Because she's not going to stop. Stopping would mean giving up on me, and the woman has never given up on anything in her life, including a 1996 Buick.
I put the phone in my pocket and go back to the gasket that doesn't need me.
It doesn't take.
The bay's quiet. Late sun coming through the doors, dust hanging in it. And I think the thing I've been not thinking for two days.
She found two without me. She's going to find a third.
That's the part that's got the wrench going cold in my hand, and it's not a thought I'm proud of. Some other alpha is going to stand in that backyard and hold her hand and learn her coffee order and be the thing I said no to, and Gus is going to watch mehear about it, around a sandwich, and not say a word, which is worse.
And the rest of it, the part I actually can't argue my way out of.
If I had a pack, even a fake one, even for a season, the calls stop. The setups stop. My mother's face stops. It's the same trade Josie's making. Same scam, same kind of mother. Hers cries about it. Mine schedules about it. Same animal.
That's the reason I'd give if anyone asked. It's a good reason. It's even true. It's just not the whole of it, and I leave the rest where it is.
