Under Chateau Lights | Complete

3 | My Mother

I cross the floor to give her a kiss on each cheek. "Mom, you know your house is only ten minutes from the station, right? We really didn't need the car."

"Well, good evening to you too, Julie. You know very well I can't have you all wandering around in the darkness with a baby." She kisses both of Elodie's cheeks and then picks Amelia up out of her arms. "And how are you today?" she coos.

Gerard makes a bee line for the drink cart in the corner and pulls out a glass for each of us. When he's finished, he hands me my glass of ginger ale with three cubes of ice like I like it. "You trying to curse Amelia or something?"

It's only then that I realize I've been staring at my mother and Amelia. "No. Just wishing she would distract Mom from whatever it is she's planning."

The deep timber of my father's voice enters the room before he does. "He's already invited, Jules. Nothing to be done." My dad stands in the doorway dressed in proper dinner attire. It really is too bad he had us for children. His style is completely lost on us.

"Why is he invited, dearest father?" I am overly formal so he knows I'm joking. I bounce across the wood floors in my socks and kiss him on the cheek. "How is work?"

"Work is work. You know how it is balancing your mother's expectations with the real estate market in this town."

"I do," I laugh. "Whose rent did you cut this time?"

"I'll tell you more later. She had a good story."

"Julie!" my mother calls from across the room, Amelia somehow nowhere to be found.

"Yes, mother?"

"Come upstairs with me. We must do something with your hair."

"I don't want to. My hair is just fine."

"But Benjamin will be here in less than half an hour. More like fifteen minutes if I know him at all and I need you looking proper before our guest arrives."

"What about everyone else?" I try to protest.

"Everyone else is not a potential match for the man. But I do expect they will clean themselves up." She pauses to shoot her laser glare around the room at each of my siblings in turn. Well, the ones who were there for dinner.

"I don't want to--"

"No arguing, Julie. I insist."

"You should go, Jules. Your mother means well."

"I know she means well, Dad. But it doesn't end well. Surely she's noticed that by now."

"Ever the optimist, your mother. One of the things I love most about her."

I groan as the air escapes my lungs. "Fine. Coming mother." I plaster a smile onto my face and point to it so Dad can see I've made an attempt.

❅ ❆ ❅ ❆ ❅

When we get upstairs, she busies herself fixing my shirt and adorning my ears with jewellery and twisting the front of my hair into a headband that looks like it's straight from the nineteenth-century. Which, coincidentally, is where she gets all of her manners and rules.

"Do we have to do the hair headband, Mom?" I'm whining and I know it, but I can't help myself. I look awful.

"Yes, we do. If you'd come with your hair curled like it usually is then I wouldn't have to fix it but with Benjamin coming over I need you presentable."

"Mom, I don't want Benjamin coming over. He used to pick on me in grade school for not being like everyone else. I doubt he's gotten much better since."