“Thanks,” I whispered, my meaning deeper than the whispered word.

“Hope you don’t mind, I’m making pancakes. Is that okay with you?” Linda asked and I blinked.

Why was she asking me?

“Um… yes?” I answered.

She nodded and turned back to the bowl.

“Mom makes great pancakes, babe,” Max told me, his finger going into my back belt loop and tugging me closer. “You’ll love ‘em.”

I looked up at him and said, “Okay.”

He grinned at me then he winked. It was the wink that got me. Max had never winked at me. I didn’t think he was the kind of man to wink. But, like all things Wonder Max, he did it great.

Using my belt loop, he positioned my still-coping-with-his-wink body close to his side by the sink.

“Max, I like that sugar bowl and creamer, saw it in town, almost picked them up for myself,” Linda noted.

“Nina bought ‘em,” Max told her over his mug then he took a sip.

“Good taste,” Linda mumbled, looked at me and said firmly, “Domestication.”

“Sorry?” I asked.

“Cupboards full. Creamer and sugar bowl. You’re domesticating Max.” That twinkle hit her eye again, I caught it again but she extinguished it before she finished, “This’ll be entertaining.”

Oh my God. She liked me!

I couldn’t help it, I smiled to myself and relaxed into Max’s side. When I did, his arm slid along my shoulders, his hand dangling casually over the left one.

“You wanna tell me why you’re here and not at work?” Max asked and I tipped my head back to look at him, following his gaze to see his eyes were on Kami.

“Day off, Curt’s funeral,” Kami replied.

“You gotta take a whole day off for Curt’s funeral?” Max asked.

“I’m grieving,” Kami returned.

“Jesus, Kami, I hope they don’t find out you’re full of shit like they did at your last job. Be hard to keep that Lexus when you don’t have a paycheck,” Max remarked.

“Don’t worry about me, got my Lexus and that’s it. Don’t have a barn full of stupid boys toys I wanna fill with even more boys toys,” Kami shot back, adding nastily, “maybe you’ll grow up in this century.”

Jealous, I thought but kept my mouth shut.

“Kami,” Linda said quietly, mixing batter.

“What?” Kami snapped but before Linda could say anything further, Max spoke again.

“Now you wanna tell me why you’re here at all?”

I looked up at him to see his eyes, cold and angry, resting on Shauna.

I’d never seen Max cold. I’d seen him angry but not cold and that cold was glacial. I took a sip of my coffee and looked at Shauna to see how she was handling it and noted she had her shields up and seemed perfectly at ease.

“Spending the day with Kami, we’re going to the funeral together,” Shauna answered.

I felt my eyes grow big and I also felt Max’s body turn to stone at my side. Further, again out of the corner of my eye, I saw Linda’s head twist around to look at Shauna.

“For obvious reasons, Shauna’s grieving too,” Kami put in.

“You have got to be fuckin’ shittin’ me,” Max growled.

“What?” Kami asked but Max ignored her and his eyes sliced to Shauna.

“You ain’t goin’ to that funeral, Shauna.”

“Why not?” Shauna enquired with what appeared to be genuine curiosity and I felt my lips part in astonishment, uncertain I’d ever seen anyone so inappropriately cavalier.

“I don’t know,” Max clipped sarcastically, “maybe because you were fuckin’ a married man and his wife, mother and father’ll be there?”

“I lost Curt too, just like Bitsy,” Shauna retorted.

“Yeah, but he loved her and was married to her for fifteen years. You were just convenient pussy,” Max shot back.

I gasped, so did Linda. Kami and Shauna both glared at Max.

“Max.” Now Linda said Max’s name quietly.

“No Mom, she’s not goin’ to that funeral.” Max’s eyes went to his sister. “And you’ve spoken about a dozen civil words to Bitsy in the last decade so you shouldn’t either.”

“I’m not six, Max, you can’t tell me what to do,” Kami returned.

“No, you’re not, you act it a lot of the time, but you’re not. What you are is old enough to know better,” Max shot back.

“We’re goin’,” Kami declared.

“Fuckin’ hell,” Max muttered.

“I was under the impression,” Linda entered the conversation and I looked at her to see she was regarding Kami, “after all that talk I heard in town about what happened with you two at Max and Brody’s table at The Rooster, that we were here so you both could talk with Max and Nina about your behavior that night.” Kami opened her mouth to speak but Linda went on. “Not,” she cut her off sharply and with obvious practice, “so you two could bring attitude into Max’s house.”

“I’m sorry, Linda,” Shauna said readily and looked at me. “You know Max and I have history, Nina,” she reminded me unnecessarily. “I guess we rub each other the wrong way. I just wanted to spend some time with Kami today since it’s gonna be a rough day for me but I probably shouldn’t have come.”

I stared at her, shocked at how good she was in front of Max’s Mom. Even I almost believed her.

“In case you feel like visiting again, Shauna, you can take it as read you aren’t welcome,” Max told her.

“Just because you two have broken up doesn’t mean you can be an asshole, Max,” Kami defended her friend.

“’Fraid it does, Kami,” Max returned.

I was now stunned. These shenanigans made my mother and me, even my father and me, seem tame. Though, my father, mother, Niles and me were still the worst, if you didn’t count me slapping my Dad during the Dad and me fiasco, of course.

“You know, Nina,” Linda said matter-of-factly as she poured batter into the melted butter in a skillet, “a mother gets to the point when her kids are kids that she looks forward to them being adults.” Her eyes came to mine as she set down the bowl. “I haven’t reached that part of motherhood yet.”

I didn’t want to say that Max wasn’t exactly acting like a kid, more like a pissed off mountain man whose bitch of a sister brought his ex-girlfriend to his house. So instead, I just smiled.

“Or at least I haven’t with Kami,” Max’s Mom went on, the twinkle came back to her eyes, it stayed there longer and my smile got wider.

“Mom!” Kami snapped and Linda turned to her, leaned forward and morphed into another woman altogether.

“What’d I say about this crap?” she hissed. “You two always fightin’ with you always startin’ it. Works my last flippin’ nerve. Max is here, what? Practically never. And instead of enjoyin’ the time you got, you get in his face. I’ve had it up to here, Kami.” She lifted a hand up to her neck and continued, “And I’ve had it up to here with talkin’ to you like you’re five when you’re thirty-five, dammit.”

“I see, as always, perfect fuckin’ Max,” Kami shot back.

“Yeah, darlin’, perfect fuckin’ Max.” Linda shot back. “Max comes over, fixes my sink and doesn’t whine at me for five hours. That’s pretty fuckin’ perfect.”

Kami flinched then her face shut down.

“Same old shit,” Kami grumbled.

“The same old shit is, Max has a new girlfriend and you bring his old one to his house, lyin’ to me about why and makin’ us look bad in front of Nina. That’s the same old shit, Kami, and I’m sick and tired of it.” Then Linda looked at me and mumbled, “Sorry Nina.”

“Um… that’s okay,” I told her.

“It isn’t,” Linda replied.

“Oh, so now it’s gonna be perfect fuckin’ Nina,” Kami bit out.

Linda turned back to her daughter but I moved in quickly with hopes of lightening the mood.

“I’m sorry, Linda, but I don’t know how to fix a sink.”

Linda looked at me, her eyes caught mine and she replied, “That’s okay, Nina. Talked to Barb. What you know how to fix is a whole lot more important than a sink.”

I stared at her, now understanding why she liked me and Max’s arm curled tighter around my neck.

“What’s this?” Kami asked.

“None of your business,” Linda said, her eyes going to her daughter then to Shauna and then she said, “You two are adults so you gotta do what you think you gotta do but I’ll tell you, you show up at Curtis Dodd’s funeral it’ll make me think less of you.” Her gaze hardened on Shauna and she finished, “It’ll make me think less of you both.”

Shauna’s eyes moved quickly away but Kami glared at her mother.

“Maybe we should leave,” Kami suggested.

“Since you’re my ride up here, that’d make it difficult for me to get down the mountain,” Linda replied.

“I’ll take you down, Mom,” Max put in smoothly.

“Perfect fuckin’ Max,” Kami shot at him.

“What is it with you?” Max shot back. “Seriously, Kami, I wanna know. Why are you such a bitch all the time?”

“I don’t know, Max, maybe it’s ‘cause you were Dad’s favorite and you’re Mom’s favorite and I could handle that if my nose wasn’t rubbed into it all the time,” Kami returned.

Jealous and juvenile, I thought, staring at her in amazement at her words for her behavior was the norm, as far as I knew it.

“Honest to God?” Max asked.

“I’m sure it’s hard for you to believe, seein’ as you have no clue how it feels,” Kami returned.

“Christ, I feel like I’m fifteen again,” Max muttered, “since we had this conversation when I was fifteen and fourteen and fuckin’ twenty-five.”

“Whatever,” Kami muttered back.

“The other thing, Nina,” Linda said to me, flipping the pancakes, “is all kids think a parent has a favorite. They don’t. It isn’t possible. You love your children, maybe not the same but always the same amount.”