“I was going to tell you,” he said.
“When?”
“Soon. I was trying to find the right time.”
“The right time was before you booked it.”
He put down his book. “My mother has been having a really hard time. She mentioned to me a few weeks ago that she’d been feeling very isolated, and I got to thinking about the trip, and I thought — she loves the coast, she hasn’t been anywhere since Dad died, it made sense to –“
“Nathan.”
“I know,” he said.
“We agreed this was our trip.”
“It can still be our trip. We’ll have our own room. We can still do things together. She’s not going to be with us every minute.”
I looked at him for a moment. “Do you actually believe that?”
He didn’t answer immediately, which told me something.
“I need you to understand,” I said, “that I’m not angry because I dislike your mother. I’m telling you this because I want to be clear about what the problem is. The problem is that we made an agreement, and you changed it without asking me. That’s what we’re talking about.”
“I know,” he said again. “But she’s been really –“
“I heard you the first time.” I paused. “Have you thought about what she can actually do on her own? Does she have friends in the area? Could she take a trip somewhere separately?”
He shifted. “She doesn’t really have anyone she’d go with.”
“That’s something worth working on.”
“Olivia.”
“I mean it. Not as a criticism. As something that might actually help her.”