Mom's the Word by Marilynn Griffith Read Free Book Online Page B

her by reaching over and taking Faith’s face in his hands and kissing her on the cheek.
    She dropped the phone book.
    On Mia’s head. The little girl shrieked in response.
    â€œSee what you’ve done!” Faith swept back her bottle-blond pageboy with one hand and reached for Mia with the other. “Come on to Number Two. Come on, sweetie.”
    Mia rubbed her head, then she rubbed her eyes, which widened quite a bit at the sight of Faith and her extended fingers, a French manicure half an inch from her eye.
    All Karol could do was gather Mia up and wonder if her mother’s madness was hereditary. She was beginning to fear that it was. All her life, she’d thought it insane that her mother insisted on being called Faith instead of Mom and Number Two instead of Grandma—especially when they’d called her father Pops forever. And yet, when she thought about it, her mother had remained Faith somehow, a person, something beyond a mother or grandmother, someone who people know better than to call to make cupcakes or drive in the car pool. Someone who mattered.
    Before Karol could get the thought out of her mind, her middle child came thundering down the stairs, sporting the paint he wasn’t supposed to use in the house. Rob stood quickly to take the situation in hand, but Karol waved him off, taking Judah upstairs to face his mess, while she was drowning in her own tangled thoughts.
    When she emerged again, her mother had made a hair appointment—with the help of Dianne with a y, no doubt—and Mia was dressed in an outfit that Karol had never seen. The surprise was that her daughter looked happy about it. She enjoyed nautical looks, and Faith the Second had just happened to pick the right sailor suit. Where Mia would ever wear it again, Karol had no idea but she was thankful for the gesture, especially after the day she’d had.
    â€œThanks, M—” A sharp look from her mother made Karol swallow the word that she heard hurled at her so many times a day. Mom. “Faith. Thanks, Faith. I really appreciate it.”
    She produced similar outfits for the boys in varied sizes. Judah had a fit over it. Ryan stared at it for a full minute proclaiming it “nice,” tugging on the shirt over the one he already wore and retreating to the corner with a book. With the way he was acting lately, that was a relative success. “Pops picked them. I thought it’d be a bust, but I guess he does know something after all.”
    Karol cringed at the way her mother talked about her father, knowing that her dad wouldn’t have said a word in his own defense if he’d been there. The way she called him Pops was bad enough. Faith was the older one actually, by two years. “Mom, please don’t call him Pops. He has a name you know. Eric. Do you ever call him that?”
    Her mother shouted for the boys to clean up and come downstairs. She held one of the shirts up in the air and waved at Rob, in the front yard, smoothing things over even further with the husband next door. The way they were laughing, maybe it was a little too smooth, but Faith didn’t seem to notice.
    â€œEric? Oh, I don’t know. I guess I still call him Pops even though you left the house long ago. He likes it.”
    He didn’t like it. Karol knew that from the face that he’d made when she started saying it. She was eight years old and her friend Tonya’s mother was going on and on about “Daddy this” and “Daddy that.”
    It turned out that she was talking about her husband. They had a son who was a junior and to keep them separate, she just called her husband Daddy. He loved it. Pops, Karol’s father, did not. He stated this a few times, but as always with Faith, she didn’t listen. And now, decades later, he still tightened his jaw before he answered to it.
    â€œYou like it, Mom. He doesn’t. I think it’s a little strange that you insist on