The Color of Ordinary Time Read Free Page A

you to tell me what you think,” she said after several minutes.
    “Okay.”
    “Back during parent-teacher conferences, one of my student’s fathers came in, and seemed quite taken with Mom and Dad’s wedding picture — the one I keep on my desk. I thought it was odd at the time, but I let it go. Then I started seeing him around town. Lots. Really lots. And he always wanted to talk. But the questions he was asking were... I don’t know. They were
off
. He didn’t just want to know what part of Illinois I was from, he wanted to know my parent’s names, and the ages of my siblings. Things that seemed nosey. So I started avoiding him.”
    I nodded and licked my lips in a way to show I was listening, even though I was staring into the distance.
    “Today, I ran into him when I stopped to pick up coffee and nacho chips on my way out of Anna. He stopped me, and asked me about Mom’s chocolate toffee cookie recipe. He acted like he’d eaten them before. Like maybe she’d made them just for him, and asked me to get him the recipe. Said he missed them. I told him no, that we didn’t give out that recipe to strangers. He said that he wasn’t a stranger. He was family, or at least he was my family. When I asked what he meant, he said that I should go ask Mom why she’d kept us apart. I left.”
    “What’s his name?”
    “Dylan Morris.”
    “Doesn’t sound familiar. Long lost uncle?” I guessed.
    “Unlikely. He was so indignant. Like somehow he was owed a relationship with me.”
    “How old was he?”
    “Maybe three or four years older than Mom.”
    “So an uncle is possible. And definitely not a grandparent, or something like that.”
    “Yup.”
    “Doesn’t seem likely though.”
    “So, I should just ignore him right? Just go home and pretend that he doesn’t exist? I mean he’s clearly mistaken,” said Ivy.
    “I guess it depends on what you want,” I said to her.
    “I want to know the truth.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Of course I’m sure. I need to be able to go back and tell Dylan Morris to shove it. He has no business going around spreading half-rumors about my parents.”
    I tottered a moment between telling her she was crazy, and telling her what she wanted to hear. I picked the middle road. “Is it possible he’s not implying what you think he is implying?”
    “Even if I don’t have the details right, Kay, he’s clearly implying they are in the wrong, somehow. That they’ve been covering something up. That’s not right. They wouldn’t do that.”
    “They wouldn’t do that? Are you sure about that? What if they thought they were protecting you and your brothers? Would they cover something up then?”
    She was quiet. I knew she resented what I had just done. I was supposed to agree with her. If I agreed she could go home and not worry about Dylan Morris anymore. If I agreed with her then she could put this all behind her without digging any deeper. But she also wanted the truth, which she was not going to get by ignoring too-obvious hitches in her plan.
    A strange kind of friend I must seem to be, not letting her let herself off the hook. The simple truth was that Ivy wouldn’t let herself off the hook, either. She would worry and pick at the situation until she was frustrated and said something outrageous, potentially rude, and most certainly destructive to her mother. Which would only make the situation worse. Here, at the top of an old Indian mound, I had one chance to at least put the brakes on her inquest. In order to apply the brakes, I had to bring her around to planning her approach. Which meant bringing her around to dealing with the obvious possibilities opened by Dylan Morris.
    Finally, grudgingly, like a displeased bull dog, she turned to me. “I guess if they thought they were protecting us, they might hide some details from the past.”
    “Okay, so let’s think of a way to approach this that isn’t going to lead to yelling and tears.”
    “Like what? ‘So Mom, did