Even After All

Part Seventeen

                “Dylan knew you’d love to see me again, but I was so busy tonight.” She reached out and touched her arm, “it’s good to see you again.”

Dylan tried to contain his anger; he’d had his mother ranting at him for the best part of the last ninety minutes. Her latest husband had left her, and she’d just found out that he had managed to coerce her into a prenuptial agreement. She was due to get nothing from the marriage, and she wasn’t happy. Any man who planned to marry a five times divorcee should protect himself, that was blatantly obvious. But it didn’t help to highlight that. Now the devil incarnate husband was a devil incarnate son.

He looked at Mattie, and was amazed at the change in his mother, from the grim angry aggressor he’d picked up for dinner into a smiling friendly woman. Then he looked at Matilda, she was enjoying this. When she’d walked up to his table, caught his mother’s attention, he was glad for a moment that he was in a busy room and wasn’t a violent man. He’d calmed a little as he’d silently let her join him without protest, but now he was wondering why she was there, what her plan was.

                “I was sorry to read about your mother. You must miss her.”

The caught his attention. His mother’s words were edged with genuine concern. How did his mother come to know about that? How hadn’t he known? He really was a bastard. No wonder the two women were instantly back on mutual ground.

He watched Matilda fight with the emotion that was obviously still raw, “it wasn’t easy. I miss her every day.”

His mother smiled and nodded, “she was a very nice woman, you were lucky.”

Matilda nodded, “I didn’t have enough of her, but what I had was amazing.”

Dylan instantly compared that to his opinions on her own mother, in the time he’d been with Mattie her mother had been like a mother to him too. He couldn’t imagine how much he let her down by abandoning her daughter.

                “Unlike your husband.”

His head shot up in shock at his mother’s harsh words and was only relieved to see an equal display of shock on Mattie’s face.

                “Maggie!”

His mother shook his head, “no Matilda, he let you down...”

As he opened his mouth to speak again, Matilda beat him to it, “sorry Maggie, but you are wrong. Dylan and I were best friends, that’s the best basis for a marriage that I know, not money, status or convenience.” He grinned at the veiled dig at his mother’s six marriages, “but we grew in different directions. The only thing that was against us was our ages, and our priorities. He was never bad to me, and I could have done a LOT worse.”

Mattie watched the other two as she finished her comment, she was perfectly aware that less than two hours ago she’d told Dylan that marrying him was the worst thing she’d ever done, she only hoped that he took the comment as the indirect apology that it was. He was trying to hide a smile and she knew that he’d appreciated what she was saying. Maggie on the other hand looked a little more uncomfortable. But then the woman was constantly down on her son, it was no wonder that he didn’t do well with commitment, with sharing, with being part of a marriage. He’d not had a half decent role model in his whole life. She on the other hand had grown up in a loving, caring and supportive family unit. She WAS the lucky one.

                “Yes well,” Maggie offered, “you always did cover for him. So you haven’t told me how you came to be invited to dinner.”