Perfect Together by Kristen Ashley

Remy’s Grandma Lucette had adored him in a sticky sweet way that never failed to make him uncomfortable.

It also never failed to rile his mother to the point of consequences for Remy when she had the opportunity to mete them.

Considering the fact Lucette lived with them until Remy was four, this had not had a positive effect on Remy’s youngest years. Guillaume then moved her to an elegant bungalow five miles away, and it hadn’t gotten better, it was just brought on for different reasons.

Nevertheless, this conditioning left him with a confusing feeling of relief when his grandmother died when he was nineteen.

He understood now, as an adult, that Lucette’s fawning love had to be a smack in the face to Colette.

Having no love from her mother, watching him get it had to hurt.

What he didn’t understand was why she took her hurt and used it to make him feel the same.

There was all of this on his mind.

And there was more.

Including the fact that moment was the first time Remy had truly faced the fact his mother was dying.

While he and his family had been there, she’d been the worst version of herself. The one he knew but his family had just met. And even though he was aware of her condition, her behavior had masked it.

In that moment, he knew the woman in the garden was dying.

His mother was dying.

And he was not feeling relief, but what he was feeling was nevertheless confusing.

Colette didn’t turn her head to look at him when she took him out of his thoughts by calling, “Was it you or Sabre who broke my bird bath?”

Melly wouldn’t share, nor would his dad, so she probably found the glass sphere in the yard, or she’d been looking out the window when he’d done it.

Remy came unstuck and moved to her.

He didn’t answer until he’d folded himself onto the thick, pear-green pad of a heavy, black wrought iron chair at her side.

It was wide-seated and comfortable for him.

She looked almost childlike perched on hers, so thin, you could fit three of her on that seat.

“It was me,” he told her.

“I assume you’ll replace it,” she remarked.

He would have started the conversation by asking after the fact she was dressed like it was chilly, going on to inquire if she was feeling all right, ending with if she needed anything before he got to the meat of their discussion.

Regrettably, his mother had a knack for conversational introductions that were supremely aggravating.

“I’ve sent an email to Lisa, she’ll take care of it,” he assured.

After, with great care, resting her china cup and saucer on the table beside her, Colette finally turned her head to Remy.

“What would you do if Wyn cheated on you?” she demanded to know, a hint of belligerence in her tone.

So they weren’t going to ease into it.

Fine.

He’d roll with that.

“I wouldn’t attempt to break her jaw with a paperweight,” he returned.

She sniffed, looked away, and murmured, “Of course not. You’re a man. Men can’t get away with that kind of thing anymore.”

Jesus Christ.

“Are you trying to upset me?” Remy asked.

She turned again to him, but before she could say anything, he spoke.

“I left the five people I love most in all this world sitting at a table together, an unusual circumstance, in order to have an important conversation with you, and you lead with giving me shit about your bird bath and saying hideous things about domestic violence?”

“So I’m not one of the people you love most in the world?” she queried.

He’d opened himself up to that one.

He skirted it.

“You chose not to have breakfast with us, and here I am.”

Her eyes flashed with irritation that he’d deftly sidestepped her first parry.

“You can’t blame me for putting my shield up,” she retorted. “Of course I’d be defensive. Your visit hasn’t exactly been loving.”

“Yes, I can blame you because you’re my mother. You should never need a shield with me. And I could say the same to you about how this visit has gone, times four, because my wife and children have endured it along with me.”

Her gaze turned hard.

But he kept at her.

“And the reason you need a shield is not because of something I did, but rather, the opposite.”

“I love your father with everything I am,” she shot back.

“Which begs the question, Mom, of why you’d hurt him.”

He took a deep breath, and when she didn’t answer, he lowered it on her.

“And me.”

She looked away.

Right…

No.

“We need to discuss this. We leave tomorrow, and as I’ve already made you aware, I’m not crazy about the idea of leaving Dad with you.” It took him a moment before he could finish what he wanted to say, but he did it. “And I deserve some answers.”

“You can’t possibly understand. Wyn worships you. You’ve always been her su…” She cut herself off from what she was about to say, fidgeted with the fringe of her pashmina, and instead said, “From the moment you met her, you became her world. She’d never do anything like that to you.”

Remy might not, until recently, have understood how highly his wife regarded him, but he’d never once worried she’d step out on him.