Trouble Comes Knocking (Entangled Embrace) by Mary Duncanson Page A

feelings than what was there?

    Each tick on the clock behind Natalie’s head left me with another iron ball clanging around in my stomach. By ten o’clock I’d decided John definitely wasn’t into me, had only wanted a one-night stand, and now he had no way to unravel himself from my overly clingy grasps. I grappled with the sting of humiliation that I knew was most likely in my head, but I’d already jumped on the train away from Relationshipville and was headed straight toward Crazytown. I didn’t see any way to make the icy sting I felt each time I thought of that kiss go away any time soon.
    All from a forehead kiss.
    “Boys are confusing,” my mother told me once.
    This conversation took place long before the summer of my first kiss and the dead body. “You think you know exactly what they want from you, and then they go and swap the script.”
    “Why?” I asked.
    We’d picked several pints of strawberries from our garden and were in the process of preserving jam in our kitchen—white-painted brick walls, the old table with metal legs we’d had since I was five, the dripping of the sink. Rooster prints lined the edge of the wall nearest the ceiling in place of molding. A leaf-shaped stain from where I’d touched the lower cabinets with paint-dipped hands as a small child.
    She let out a sigh. “Boys and girls are different,” she said, pushing jars into a pot of boiling water. “I don’t think they mean to be confusing, but they find it hard to communicate the way we do.
    “I remember being told in a sociology class once that girls develop rapport while boys spend time reporting. It means girls want to talk things over while boys only want the facts.”
    I nodded as if I understood, but I totally didn’t. She and my dad fought the night before, and I think that’s what prompted the conversation. I couldn’t hear what they’d been fighting about, but I never wanted to, anyway. I’d overheard my own name too many times—enough to think I might be the center of all their struggles.
    I can still remember watching her at the stove.
    “Mom, be careful. Those jars haven’t been in there long enough, if you pull them now, the lids won’t seal.”
    She looked at me and smiled. “I’ve been watching the clock, baby.”
    “I know, but I think the battery is dying on the clock.”
    “Oh, I thought I just changed that battery,” she said. “But you’re probably right. You always are. How much longer, sweetie?”
    “I’ll let you know when.” I’d been sitting at the table, supposedly cutting off the tops of strawberries but eating as many as I threw into the washbowl.
    She looked like a mom right out of one of those fifties magazines, working at the stove, wearing a tan skirt and an old pair of tennis shoes, and in that moment I was glad she was mine. That morning I’d helped her pull her brown hair back with two combs. We laughed together as we put on our aprons, sang goofy songs while we did our kitchen work.
    I was eleven then.
    I had no idea who she was.
    I still don’t.

    I wanted to beg out of lunch and would have if not for the possibility of getting some information from Clive. I wasn’t sure what I might get, but I knew if he let anything slip, I’d catch it.
    Still, I wanted to sit next to John about as much as I wanted a root canal.
    Yesterday everything had been so exciting and wonderful. Now my confidence was rattled by that stupid kiss. What kind of asshole gives a wimpy-ass kiss after the woman he supposedly likes nearly dies, anyway? The only thing keeping me from feeling like a complete social failure was that I had Natalie on my side. Not that she knew anything was wrong, but literally, she stayed at my side.
    “This is gonna be fun,” she bubbled. “I’ve never gone on a couples date before. Clive is always so grouchy about hanging with other people. ‘I’m tired,’ he says, or ‘I don’t feel like it.’ It’s always some excuse. I can’t believe he agreed