5

Lina looked up from her magazine as Phil closed the parenting book, tossing it along with his reading glasses onto the bedside stand several nights later. “You’re not done, are you? Not even you read that fast.” She’d been bugging him to read the book for two days, and he’d picked it up less than thirty minutes earlier. “It took me four hours.”

“I’ve read enough.” He turned out his light. “That book is exactly what’s wrong with the kids of this generation. Parents aren’t parenting anymore. Apparently our only role is to provide food and shelter—it’s insanity.”

“The book isn’t saying we shouldn’t guide them. It’s saying we shouldn’t control them to the point where they lose their own inner direction.”

“You want her to follow her own inner direction? Isn’t that what got us here in the first place? Do you know why you like this book so much? It strikes a nostalgic chord in you. This is your mother’s parenting style.”

She laughed. “That isn’t true. You’re just seeing what you want to see. The book talks extensively about setting boundaries and having rules, which we both know my childhood lacked. This is more about not telling them what to think.”

“Someone’s going to. Do you want television and their friends to tell them what to think? They aren’t old enough to decipher the bullshit. And the section on adolescent boys—Jesus Christ. The author has no clue. All this touchy-feely crap.” He snorted in disgust. “That’s not how you raise a man.”

“You’re impossible.”

“Am I?” He took the magazine from her hands and tossed it to the floor. “Am I impossible?” He pushed her back against the mattress. “Do you wish I was more delicate?” He pinned her body beneath his, one of his legs moving between hers. “I don’t think my sensitive side is what attracted you to me,” he growled against her ear. “Is it?” He pushed his lower body into hers. “Do you want me to talk more, baby?” He began to grind his hips into hers, his breath warm against her ear. “Share my feelings—cry a little maybe?”

“Shut up,” she whispered.

“That’s what I thought.”

“This book was Mom’s,” Katie said, holding up a book on palmistry. “It says her name inside the front cover.” After lunch at Alice’s favorite vegan restaurant, they’d gone back to her house for the afternoon.

“Oh, your mother dabbled in everything back in the day.” Alice continued flipping through a beginner’s book on astrology.

Katie’s eyes widened when she saw a witchcraft book entitled The Book of Spells. She pulled it off the shelf. “Do they really work?” She carefully ran her fingers over the raised letters of the title. She couldn’t imagine they did, but what if she was wrong? What if she could actually—

“It all depends on what you believe. Your aunts had a lot of fun with that if memory serves me correctly. Maybe even your mom.”