She was working on some more dictation from Mr. Rees. It was six weeks since the weekend after New Year’s–since Portia and I had started something up. They’d been pretty good weeks. Mom had even come ‘round to the idea that this girl might actually be good for me. She’d stopped panicking when I stayed out. But I hadn’t shown her a picture. I didn’t know how she’d take the fact that Portia was white. Stupid. But Mom was gonna have to step out of her comfort zone. She was a traditionalist, she liked things just so. Portia’s background and her families money, was gonna throw Mom off track when she found out I was dating a society girl. She’d be anxious about it causing trouble for me. Anxiety was stitched into Mom’s DNA–by Dad’s failings–and there was no unpicking it. She worried, and I hated making her worry, but I also had to live my life. Robin had filled me in on the fact she’d been asking him a ton of questions. But he didn’t know Portia was white either.
