“Well, that’s good. I take it she’s not around any longer?”

“No.” She held her hand up. “And before you ask, yes, I was the one who ended it, not her.”

“I wasn’t going to ask.”

“You always blame me.”

“Well, your track record is what it is.”

“I just don’t see the point in continuing to date someone when you already know that they’re not ‘the one,’” she said, making quotations in the air.

“I’m not sure you give them a chance,” her mother said with a wave of her hand. “Of course, the only tidbits of your life I’ve had lately have been from Carla.”

“It’s not like I haven’t called you in the last seven years.”

“Phone calls that lasted perhaps five minutes.”

She picked up her toast, which was now cold. “I’m sorry, Mom. I simply could not tolerate that man.”

“You never gave him a chance either.”

Laura held her hand up. “Please…let’s don’t go there again. We’re getting along fine. Let’s not bring Frankie into it, okay? Truce?”

Her mother took a sip of her orange juice, then seemed to study her. Laura sighed, then looked up, meeting her gaze.

“What?”

“I take it you’re not seeing anyone now?”

“No. Not for a…a while,” she said evasively. As her mother had said, her track record was what it was.

“Why?”

She blinked at her. “I’ve been focusing on my writing.” Yeah, right.

“So you can’t date?”

“Yes, I can date. It’s just that the older I get, the choosier I get.”

Her mother stared at her blankly. “I would think it would be the opposite.”

Laura actually laughed. “It’s too easy. My comeback…it’s too easy. I won’t even say it.”

“I know you’re referring to Frankie. I was fifty-eight, not thirty-eight.”

“I’m thirty-seven!”

“Regardless, you’ll wake up one day and you’ll be fifty and alone. And your problem all along has been that you’re too choosy. You were always that way, even in high school. You’re looking for this perfect person. They don’t exist, Laura Sue. You’re going to have to lower your standards.” Her mother’s spoon clanked into her empty bowl. “Although I did like that cute fellow you dated in college.”

“You only liked him because his parents were rich.”

“Filthy rich,” her mother corrected with a grin.

“He was kinda nice,” she admitted. “He was my last attempt at being straight.”

“Well, you are what you are.”

Yes, that was one thing she always respected her mother for. When she came out to her, to her father, her mother hadn’t blinked an eye. She’d said those very words to her. Even her father hadn’t been thrown by the news. Perhaps it’s true what they say; parents know long before you do.