Page 147 of Fierce-Matt

How the hell was he going to dig himself out of this if she wouldn’t even talk to him?

His fist hit his desk.

“Problem?”

He looked up to see his father standing there.

“No,” he said.

“Really? Because you look like someone whose puppy is running loose down the street and your shoelaces are tied together when you try to go after it.”

“That sounds about right.”

Tim Kelly walked in and sat in front of his desk. “What happened with Anya? You had the closing this morning and then the lawsuit signed off. I thought today would be a good day for everyone.”

“I thought so too until Mom opened her mouth.”

His father frowned. Matt knew he was crossing the line with his tone, but he was too furious to care.

“What did she say?”

“She brought up to Anya that Macy was here. She thought Anya knew, which she didn’t.”

“Why didn’t you tell Anya?” his father asked. The same confused tone his mother had. “I have to admit I’m surprised you didn’t. I thought you two were saying everything to each other as your way of earning her trust and clearing the air.”

He opened his mouth and closed it again.

“Fuck!”

His father stood up. “I’ll take that as you realize you made a mistake. You’ve fixed several of them already, I’m sure you’ll figure out how to correct this one.”

“You owe me.”

Grace looked up from her desk when her husband came in.

“Thanks.”

“I think you’re wrong doing what you did.”

“Things are too good between them,” she said. “Jolene was right. They need to have some kind of disagreement. With their past, it’s the only way they can see what their future holds.”

“I’m not disagreeing, but it’s not good to get involved. You’ve been overly involved with Matt more than anyone else. Why?”

Her head went back and forth. “Because Matt is the one that has needed the most reassurance. I often think we were too hard on him.”

“No,” Tim said. “We weren’t hard enough. We’d point out what he was doing but never forced him to take a bigger look at things.”

“You said he had to learn on his own,” she argued. “I agreed with you. But he didn’t learn fast enough.”

It was a disagreement they’d had for years with Matt.

Her son loved to play jokes on people. He needed the attention.

The middle child syndrome in her eyes.

Not everyone thought it was funny.

“Yes,” Tim said. “He was a slow learner. And then you coddled him. Your tone of voice was more about a lecture rather than hard facts. Grounding him and making him replace broken items worked more, but you didn’t want to do it. That was me that forced it.”