My Mom & My Dad

Chapter 10: The Weekend in Vegas (Part 2)

A/N:  As a continuation of the previous chapter, this one is once again written entirely from Emily's point of view.  I'm not using italics anymore for easy reading.

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Emily:

The tour of the IT department of Palmer Technologies took almost the rest of the afternoon. By the time it was done, my feet hurt. I was getting kind of cranky, so my mom requested Oliver and Mr. Diggle to bring us back to the hotel immediately after.

An hour ago, Mr. Palmer had to leave us with his assistant Mr. Judson, saying that he had other important matters to attend to. The goodbyes were very brief and formal, and I noticed that my mom did not shake his hand at all when he said goodbye to her. She had me standing behind her, shielding me from Mr. Palmer's view. At that time, I didn't understand what the fuss what about, but now I do.

When we got back to our hotel suite, Mom changed my clothes and put me to bed for a nap. She wanted me to be well rested so that I won't be crankier during our dinner with my grandparents later that night. She kicked off her heels and lay down beside me, still wearing her office clothes. She tapped at my thighs to lull me to sleep as she hummed a Disney tune.

"Mom," I began to ask, "why are you upset with Mr. Palmer?"

"Why do you think I'm upset with him?" She replied with another question.

"You were upset. I could tell."

"Emily, sweetheart, you see... Mr. Palmer and I were friends before you were born. But he did something bad, something that made Mommy really sad and angry."

"So he's not your friend anymore? What did he do?"

"Well, I think... you'd have to wait until you're a little older before I can answer that. But yes, Mr. Palmer and I are no longer friends."

"That's sad," I replied, half asleep. And then I dozed off...

At 6:30, Mr. Diggle, Oliver, Mom, and I were ready to head off to my grandparents' for dinner. We were dressed in comfortable casual clothes, coz mom said we didn't have to dress up for it. Mr. Diggle was driving in front, and I was sitting in the car seat in between Mom and Oliver. After the limo left the hotel driveway, Oliver started a conversation with my mom.

"Are you okay?" he asked my mom.

"I'm a bit better now. The late afternoon nap did me some good," Mom replied.

"That's good," Oliver said. "You know I'm here for you, right? If you want to talk?"

"Yeah, I know," Mom said with a smile. "We can talk about Palmer later. Right now, I'd rather talk about dinner... with my parents."

"So... what about dinner with your parents? Anything I should be ready for?" Oliver asked, grinning.

"First of all, don't be too fresh with my dad. No arms around shoulders. No high fives. No hugging. Dad prefers to be civil with a new acquaintance. Mom is a different story. She has a bubbly personality, and she likes to tease. You can actually give her a friendly hug... lots of it!" Mom explained.

"Really? She didn't strike me as the bubbly type when we met earlier today," Oliver remarked.

"Oh, that. Quite frankly, Mom's a bit apprehensive about you," Mom said, biting her lower lip and smiling with her eyes.

"Apprehensive? Why is that?"

"Oh, after what happened between me and Ray, she sort of started thinking that every guy that comes along is out to hurt me again. She's just being the overprotective lioness, watching over her cub." Mom winked at him.