After dinner, I shut myself in the library with my mother while the rest of the company sat in the great room. I did want to talk to Simon as well, but I was less annoyed with him. Whatever he said about Shannon, it clearly came from a place of pain. I didn’t want to be hard on him. The fact was, I could become a partaker of that particular pain with a few well-placed words from Shannon at any time.

What was happening with my mother was different. I had done the thing I didn’t want to do. I had made my mother part of the equation. If Shannon got me, she also got my mother. Her unwelcome behavior had to be addressed and immediately.

“Let’s talk,” I said to her, drawing her away and closing the doors tight behind us. “I need you to explain to me what’s going on. You don’t even know Shannon and your hostility toward her has been unfathomable. You’ve never spoken to a guest of mine like this before. What’s wrong?”

“For starters, she brought that awful cake. How am I supposed to serve that? I made a trifle. I’ll serve that instead.”

My expression dropped to bored. “I brought the cake, mum. She didn’t pick it. I did.”

“Why are you picking such terrible baked goods? Didn’t I teach you better?”

“It’s a chocolate cake. You like chocolate. I didn’t think about it more than that. I didn’t think I needed to because I’ve never been scolded that I brought the wrong thing to dinner before.”

“I can see I need to teach you more about piping,” she said stiffly.

I took her hand. “What else?”

“I hate your haircut. Doubtless, you got it because of her. You look just like those terrible hipsters on TV. Why don’t you shave? Your facial hair is completely out of control. It’s curling down your neck and you look like a--”

“A man?” I supplied for her. “Instead of a little boy?”

She bit back. “You look untidy.”

“Let me unpick this for you. My haircut was not influenced by Shannon in the least. I was drumming last weekend and someone suggested I needed a haircut. This was what came of it. In case you were planning on blaming her, my beard has nothing to do with her either. I haven’t shaved because my face has been raw lately and I was giving it a break over the weekend. I was planning to shave tomorrow.”

“Oh?”

“My hair will grow out. It’s just hair. That’s what you say every time someone gets butchered at the salon. You laugh about it. What’s really going on?”

She took a deep breath. “She’s not my kind of girl.”

“What does that mean?”

“She’s not a girl’s girl. She’s a maneater. How am I supposed to have a relationship with a woman who thinks my little boy is her plaything? How is she supposed to be part of the family if the boys won’t stop gawking at her and her little dress that is supposed to go down to her ankles but parts and shows her whole leg whenever she wants? She’s not fooling anyone with those ribbons in her hair.”

I was thinking of how to answer this sensitively when Simon burst into the room. “Sorry. I was listening at the door.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“Simon!” she squeaked. “It’s really bad manners to listen at doors.”

“But I have to tell you something,” he said, closing the door behind him. “Shannon has three sisters and a sister-in-law. She’s close with all of them. She’s more of a girl’s girl than you’re giving her credit for. She’s just scared.”

“What do you mean, she’s scared? I’d bet money that the girl has dragon scales on her back.”

Simon lit up his phone screen and started searching for something. “Look, Auntie, you’re making her into something she’s not. She’s just not exactly like the girls were in your day and your sons don’t bring enough girls home with them for you to know the difference between a flower and a weed. You didn’t get any daughters or nieces, so you don’t know what Fletch brought home. This is the woman whose band he played with last weekend.”

For a second, I felt like I had been hit with a sledgehammer as Simon showed my mother a picture from the Blades and Blasters’ concert. It was of me and Rin. Her abdomen was showing along with her belly chain and her belly rings. There were tattoos, her wildly dyed hair, her much-too-much stage makeup, and her tongue out. Beside her was me, shirtless, while Rin wrote the words ‘Wild at Heart’ over my pec with her eyeliner pencil surrounded by a crowd of concertgoers.

“For frick’s sake!” I exclaimed. “Someone took a picture of that?”

“It’s on the Blades and Blasters’ page and the Eloquent Spider’s page,” he explained calmly.

I looked at my mother through parted fingers.

Her teeth were clenched and she was glaring at me. “Where was Shannon during this?”

“At home, I think. She didn’t come the first night. I washed all that off after I got home.”

“U-huh. You know, as a parent, you sacrifice and you sacrifice. I paid for all the different rental instruments. Every time you wanted to take up the oboe or the guitar, I went to the shop and rented you the new instrument. I drove you to every band practice until you could drive yourself. I went to all your concerts, and you know how much money your father and I gave you for your university education. I would not have done any of that if I thought for one second that you would join a band!”

I stared at her. Then I started to chuckle. “You took me to band practice, thinking that I would never join a band?”

“Well, not a band like that!” she fumed.

I couldn’t hold back the laughter. “Mum. That gig was a one-time thing, and whether you like it or not, I had a great time playing with them. They have a regular drummer. I was a replacement. That was not Shannon’s scene and I was lucky she came to see me on the second night. You,” I said, turning to Simon. “I hope that you’re not harboring any further resentment toward me because your revenge is swift and brutal. I can’t believe you showed my mother that picture.”

Simon scoffed and put his phone away.

I turned back to my mother. “Mum, you’re right. There’s something off about Shannon. You’re sensing it, but you’re not able to label it. She’s not acting like herself today. She wanted to impress you and thought that showing this side of herself was best because she wasn’t confident enough to show you her true self all at once. Frankly, she’s right. She’s not what you’re expecting or what you think you want in a daughter-in-law. Please understand that her behavior today was an act, but it was a good-natured lie.”

“I want to say that I’ll be happy with anything as long as you’re happy, but I had such high hopes for the girl you brought home. You have always been such a good boy.”

I pulled a tissue free from the box next to her.

She continued, “But I can see that you have a whole life I don’t know about. Wild at heart?”

I scratched my head and didn’t think of a reply.

“Wait a second,” my mum said, as she gave real consideration to my words. “You said she wasn’t what I was expecting in a daughter-in-law. Fletch,” she clutched at my hand. “Are you going to marry her?”

“I love her. I already want to marry her. I’m here with her today to give you a head’s up. I might come home tomorrow and tell you that I have married her.”

Simon laughed. “Like you’d be able to get her to just marry you at the courthouse or something. Don’t be ridiculous. She has to have a high-class wedding. It would probably take two years to plan.”

I shook my head. “If she wanted to marry me, she’d marry me wearing a garbage bag. She’s very determined when she wants something.”

I looked to Simon for his reaction. His expression was strange. He wanted to defend Shannon, which was why he burst into the library defending her, yet he obviously did not believe she would choose me. He was still expecting me to be very disappointed.