The Hardest Cut by Jamie Bennett (book club recommendations .TXT) 📕

the evening didn’t get much better.  My mom filled us in on what had happened in her “book club,” a group which had nothing to do with literature and was actually a vicious gossip circle in which she and her friends dissected the lives of everyone in town.  I really, really didn’t want to hear the awful stories, but Kristi was all ears, and shared her own gossip from Case’s school and various activities.

For the meal, my mom served what she termed “diet food” to herself, Kristi, and me, so while Anthony and my nephew Case had her special lasagna, we had low-fat cottage cheese, canned peaches in low-sugar syrup, and celery sticks.  “Almost one hundred percent water,” she remarked to Kristi about those, and Kristi nodded back.

“Burn as you eat!” my sister-in-law agreed.  She barely touched the food on her plate, anyway, so she didn’t need to worry about burning much tonight.  My mom had always been very concerned about her own caloric intake and everyone else’s, too—mine especially.  Kristi had happily jumped on the diet bandwagon with us.

“Gaby, iterate for me how you’re operationalizing your real estate enterprise,” Anthony requested after he swallowed a mouthful of lasagna.  “Have you identified your KPIs?”  I didn’t know what those were, but I nodded and carefully cut my mushy half-peach into smaller and smaller pieces to make it last longer.  I understood in general that he was asking if I was working on my business, but even though I had thought a lot about how to answer these potential questions, I still hadn’t come up with the right things to say.

I went with deflection.  “How is your job going, Anthony?” I asked.

“Gaby, are you trying to avoid the topic of your own future?” Kristi asked, and sent a knowing glance at my mom.

And Anthony wasn’t deflected, either.  I could tell by the look on his face that he was ready to hold me over the flames, like what happened to his car, but on purpose.  First, he asked me exactly what I’d done since the last time we’d talked, which was the last time I’d come to dinner at my mom’s house.  And the answer was actually “not a lot.”  I had been really busy with the Woodsmen auditions, and…stuff.  There was really no excuse for it, as Anthony quickly pointed out to me.

“You’re not maximizing your output,” he noted, which meant that I was wasting time.  I nodded.  “You need to leverage your assets to stay ahead of the curve.  That’s mission-critical.”

Meaning: I needed to work harder to make things happen for myself or I wouldn’t get anywhere.  “Yes,” I agreed.  “I plan to leverage them.  It’s critical.”

“Anthony, why don’t you tell her what you’re doing in your own business?” my mom suggested, smiling proudly across the table.  “That might give your little sister the inspiration she lacks.”

“I don’t lack inspiration,” I said, but now Kristi was encouraging him too and my brother was already talking about himself.  I was never quite sure what Anthony did—something about energy markets, and more with online currency, and also trading futures, and something else about consulting and executive coaching.  He talked for the rest of dinner and we listened and nodded until his son’s head thumped on the tabletop when he fell asleep.  I was headed that way, myself.

“Time for bed for Case!  He had a big day at school and at martial arts,” Kristi noted, and my mom turned a happy smile on her grandson.

“He’s already a magenta belt,” she told me, and I smiled, too, in appreciation of Case’s accomplishments.  Also, I was very glad that the dinner was over.

“Gabriella, wait,” my mom said as I walked quickly to the door after we’d done the dishes.  Reluctantly, I stopped to talk to her.

“Just for a sec, because I need to get home.  Beauty sleep!” I told her, smiling.  Tonight I was on-call, so I really would need to get home eventually, but I had a while.

“You’re not going out now?” she asked.  “It’s Friday night!  No date?”

I kept up the smile.  “Not tonight.”  Or tomorrow, or any other night.  I had no interest in that.

She frowned back at that answer, but she had another problem, too.  “I’m not seeing you enough.  I know you were busy with your job at the real estate office, but then you got fired,” she reminded me, in case I had forgotten that moment of misery.  “You have plenty of time on your hands and I think you should make more room in your schedule for your only parent.”

Well, that was complicated, and there were a lot of things I couldn’t say to my mom about why I wasn’t seeing her very frequently.  She would only get disappointed and make me feel guilty—which I should have, I told myself, for ignoring my only parent.  “I’m sorry,” I apologized again, for the thousandth time that evening.  “I’m really sorry.  All I can say is that I’m going to try to do better.  With everything.”

I thought about that promise as I cranked up the little brown and green car and headed back home to my condo, not to Hallie’s beautiful, lakeside house where I’d been staying with Marley.  I had to start doing better, for real.  I had to buckle down and work on starting my business, because my savings (what there had been) from my former job with Sterling Standard Realty were gone, and part-time at the bookstore and taking care of Tessa weren’t enough.  Although, of course, soon I’d have the small stipend I’d get as a Woodsmen cheerleader.  Very small, but something!  I made myself believe that it would still happen, that I’d still be in the orange halter top, even if that was seeming increasingly farfetched.

So, I would need to make my real estate business work.  I held in a sigh and fought off the sinking feeling it gave me.  I had liked my job, mostly, at Sterling Standard Realty.  It had been fun