Something had changed. And I was too afraid of acknowledging it to even mention it to Leah and Connor. A shift had occurred between Lucas and I. I hadn't noticed it until the night we'd gone to the club and what happened afterward. The way he'd looked at me, almost reverent. How gentle he'd been even in the midst of sex. And the way he looked at me now. Every time I walked by him, every time our arms brushed when I reached across him or our legs touched when we sat beside one another, he would smile and gaze into my eyes like that accidental touch was the only thing in his life that he needed to keep going.

I felt it too, the shift. Maybe that was why it scared me so much. I found myself watching him now. Even when he was only eating a muffin or scrolling through emails. Everything he did seemed to fascinate me. Like the man read an email hotter than anyone I'd ever seen read an email. But how ridiculous was that to even think?

Leah and Connor stayed the remainder of the weekend. We had gone to the club on Friday so we all hung around the house, mainly in the pool, on Saturday. Then, Sunday afternoon, Lucas and I took them to the airport and waved goodbye. After that, he had work to do. He locked himself in his home office for a few hours while I busied myself with catching up on my own emails. I hadn't checked in much with work and it was discouraging to see how little I was needed. Don't get me wrong. I was happy that they were able to handle everything without me but I'd been here over a week and the only time I'd interacted with anyone from work was the phone call in LAX where Gary had told me he hated my cheeseburger joke.

I collapsed onto the bed with a sigh. Serious career women did not spend their days making up jokes about ground beef.

I fell asleep while Lucas was still in his office and stayed asleep until after he left the next morning. When I finally woke, I padded through the halls in one of Lucas' dress shirts until I came upon Luisa and the omelet she was making me. I thanked her profusely and ate, sipping my orange juice and considering my options for the day. By the time I had finished eating, I'd decided. I had put off visiting my mother long enough. Today was the day.

After breakfast, I changed into some jeans and a modest black v neck. I slipped on my Birkenstocks and pulled my hair up into a high ponytail, creating a headband with a white and black bandana. Then I left the house. Kevin was off in the city, waiting for Lucas to finish work, or maybe he was home. I wasn't sure what he did during the days. Nonetheless, I hadn't told him I'd be needing him so he hadn't hung around to see if I would.

Instead, I walked all the way to Lucas' high security gate and called myself an Uber. One of his neighbors passed by, walking their miniature something, while I was waiting and stared at me like I was doing the walk of shame. I looked down at my outfit and where I was coming from and sighed when I realized that was exactly what this looked like.

Luckily, my Uber arrived soon enough and I climbed inside and verified the address. As we drove away, I checked my phone. I hadn't warned my mother that I would be coming. I'd hoped to surprise her. But she'd called me last night while I was sleeping and I hadn't called her back. Leah had texted me that she was already missing the mansion. Connor had added that he was missing my Argentinian hunk. I just smiled and locked my phone, settling in for the long ride from the haves to the have nots.

My mother hadn't left the house I'd grown up in. Not even when we all had. So I knew the address, and the neighborhood, by heart. It wasn't a good one. A far cry from Lucas' Silicon Valley modern marvel, my mother's tear down Spanish style three bedroom house screamed lower middle class. But I didn't mind it. There were memories in every crack and tear. Some good, some bad. It was always bittersweet coming here.

I did not linger on the sidewalk to admire it when the Uber dropped me off. I just thanked the driver and opened the chain link fence next to the sidewalk. Then I hurried up the path before my mother could come running to the door. We used to joke that she could hear that chain link open from a mile away and I knew that, at least, hadn't changed.

She hadn't either. It had been six years, six long years since I'd actually seen her in person, and the moment she opened her door and saw me standing on her porch, she burst into tears, holding out her arms for an embrace. I went to her, letting her sweep me up into her arms. She hugged me tightly, rocking back and forth and squeezing as if afraid that I would, at any moment, vanish into thin air and not return for another six years.

"Piper! My baby! Come inside, come inside. Oh my, it's so good to see you! You look great, sweetie. You look gorgeous! Sit! Sit!"

I obeyed, entering my childhood home and taking a seat on the faded maroon couch. I glanced around at all of the photos. Me at soccer practice, Lola holding up her high school diploma, Lola and I at the state fair. I took a breath as the guilt of being away so long settled into the pit of my stomach. Coming back here was harder than I expected.

"Do you want something to drink, dear?" My mother asked with a smile. "Or something to eat maybe? I could make waffles. You always loved waffles."

"No, thanks mom. I had— I already ate."

She nodded, smiling wistfully at me as she patted my hand with her own.

"So you're here for a visit?" She asked, hopefully.

I nodded.

"For a while, yeah," I told her.

"When did you get in?"

"About a week ago."

"I bet Lucas has been over the moon since then."

"Um, yeah."

"Are you sure you don't want anything to drink?"

"I'm fine, mom. Really."

She nodded, still watching me as our conversation fell to silence.

"Do you want to stay for lunch? I was going to make—"

"I'm sorry, mom," I interrupted her and she froze, lips parting slightly. "I shouldn't have— I didn't mean to stay away so long. I was just trying to figure myself out and I guess I lost in the vastness of it all."

My mother's lip trembled and I saw the tears forming in her eyes before they fell.

"Mom, no! Don't cry!" I exclaimed, reaching for the box of tissues and handing them to her.

"I'm sorry," she sniffled, taking the tissues and dabbing at her eyes. "I don't mean to. I just, Piper, I thought I lost you too. First your dad and then your sister and you stopped calling and I— I—"

"I know, mom. I know. And I'm so sorry. I wish I could make these last six years up to you but I can't. I'm going to try to visit more, okay? I promise."

She looked up at me then, batting wet eyelashes.

"You're going back?" She asked and she sounded genuinely confused. I blinked at her.

"Yeah," I replied. "I have to. My job is there. My apartment—"

"What about your husband?" She exclaimed, jumping to her feet. Tissue still clutched tightly in her hand, she stared down at me. "Don't leave Lucas like Henry left me."

I blinked at her.

"Mom, I'm not," I told her, calmly. "That's not what it's like with us. It's—"

"Different, yes, I know Piper. That's what you always tell me when I ask about why you're off in New York and not here with your husband."

"Because it's the truth, mom."

She watched me for a moment. It was clear that there was more she wanted to say but she didn't. Instead, she sniffled once more, wiped her nose with the tissue, and strode off for the kitchen.

"I'm making waffles," she said. "You can have some or not."

Brows furrowed in confusion, I followed after her. She seemed angry at first but calmed down after a few minutes and we started talking again. She told me about her job at the library, about the new system they were implementing to track all the books and how much she hated it. She told me about a few of her coworkers, which she liked and which she didn't. She asked me about my job and nodded politely when I talked more about my friends than my career. We didn't talk about dad or Lola. I knew better than to bring either of them up. Instead, we talked about us. The spin class she was taking on Tuesdays and the yoga that Leah was forcing me to do in the apartment so that she could practice her "instruction techniques".

Soon, we were eating our waffles and laughing. Then I excused myself to go to the bathroom and tripped over a loose floorboard on the way.

"Oh, mom did you know about this?" I called out.

"The floorboard?" She asked. "Yes, dear. I know."

"You should really get it fixed. It's dangerous."

"I'll have Lucas take a look at it when he comes next week."

I froze, wondering if I heard her correctly. Then I stepped slowly back into the kitchen and looked over at her. She was eating her waffles as if nothing had happened.

"When Lucas comes next week?" I asked.

"Mmhmm," she replied and then looked up at me. "Oh, though I guess he might be busy this month if you're visiting, won't he?"

"This month?"

She blinked at me, her chewing coming slowly to a stop.

"Oh," she said, finally understanding that I had no idea what she was talking about. Bu, from the sounds of it, she and my husband had a standing monthly date which included him fixing things around her house for her.

Gritting my teeth and furious, I grabbed my purse from the chair and stormed toward the front door.

"Piper, wait!" My mother called after me, leaping up from her seat and running after me. But I was through the front door and down the crumbling path before she could catch up. She paused on the porch and shouted to me as I made my way through the fence and onto the sidewalk beyond. "Where are you going?"

"To have a word with my husband," I snapped and then stormed away from my mother's house.

The farthest stop on the subway was downtown LA which was fine with me because that's precisely where I was going. I remained seething with fury all the way through my ride on the subway. People were taking one look at my face and scorching as far away as they could get. When the muffled voice finally announced my stop, I stormed off of the platform, taking the stairs two at a time until I reached the surface level. Another seven minute walk and I was standing in front of his office building.

I strode through the lobby, straight past the receptionist calling after me, and to the elevator. I wasn't sure where, exactly, I was going but I didn't have the patience to ask someone. Until I pressed the wrong button on the elevator and ended up on a floor full of cubicles. I was just about to turn around and head back to the lobby when I caught sight of Nate.

"Mrs. Boss Man," he greeted with a smile, striding over to me with a stack of papers in his hand. His smile faltered the moment he saw my face.

"Where's his office?" I snapped, jaw clenched in rage.

"Whoa, is everything okay there, Piper?"

"Where, Nate?"

"Fourteenth floor."

I jerked my head in a nodding motion and whirled around to return to the elevator. Nate made a move to follow, likely to ask more questions or try to calm me down, but thought better of it and walked away in the opposite direction instead. I waited for the elevator and then hopped on and rode it up to the fourteenth floor. When the doors opened, I stepped into another, much smaller lobby. This one was carpeted and had several seats for waiting and one desk with a receptionist seated behind it.

"Can I help you, ma'am?" She squeaked when I stomped into the room. I looked over at her once before scanning the rest of my surroundings. There was a large glass room on my right, the door to which was in the corner. I assumed that was it and stormed toward it. "Wait, you can't go in there! He's on a call—"

I shoved the door open anyway.

"—send you the projections for the expansion," Lucas finished, looking up at me, brow furrowed in confusion. He opened his lips and mouthed silently to me, what are you doing here?

I just crossed my arms and clenched my jaw even harder. He blinked at me once and then turned back to his call.

"Um, I'm going to have to call you back," he said. "Something's come up."

Someone made a noise of disapproval from the other end of the line but he hang up anyway.

"I'm so sorry, sir," his mousy secretary was squeaking from behind me in the doorway. "She ran right past me. I couldn't—"

"It's okay, Trudy. This is my wife, Piper."

Trudy's eyes went wide as she gazed at me.

"That'll be all, Trudy," Lucas said and the receptionist bowed her head and left, closing the door behind her so that we were alone.

Lucas walked around to the front of his desk and leaned back on it casually, crossing his arms at his midsection and looking me over.

"I can tell, from your radiating anger, that you probably didn't come all this way to have lunch with me," he said. I narrowed my eyes in a glare to show him that I was in no joking mood.

"I went to visit my mother," I told him. He nodded at once, immediate understanding dawning on him.

"Ah, I see."

"You see? That's all you can say is you see?"

"What do you want me to say, Piper? If you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. But you've already decided you're pissed at me so I'm not sure there's much I can do to alleviate that."

I stared at him for a moment, jaw working as if trying to argue with him, but I had nothing to say.

"Have you been visiting my mother?" I asked.

"Sometimes," he admitted with a shrug as if it were nothing.

"Monthly?"

He looked up at me. Our eyes met and he hesitated.

"Yes," he answered after a moment. I took a breath, trying to keep my anger at bay.

"Why?"

He sighed.

"Do you want to hear the whole story?" He asked. "Would that make you feel better?"

"I don't know," I snapped.

"Okay," he sighed, scrubbing a hand over his face and gesturing to the armchair in front of him. "Sit?"

I remained standing.

"Piper, please," he said, his eyes pleading with me. "Just hear me out."

Reluctantly, I sat.

"It was right after you left for New York," he started. "I guess she'd been trying to get ahold of you for a couple days and you were busy with your internship and didn't answer. She called me worried about you. I didn't even know you told her about us. We had agreed not to tell our families about us."

I frowned, looking down at the carpet. He was right about that. When we had gotten married six years ago, we had decided to keep our matrimony to ourselves. We didn't want to complicate things with our families and telling them made it seem all too real. But I hadn't been able to keep it from my mom. With everything that she had been dealing with at the time, it felt like just another lie that one of us was telling her.

"I just—" I started to explain but he held up a hand, silencing me.

"I don't need to know why you did it, Piper," he told me. "I never even thought to ask. All I knew was that you did tell her for some reason. And that if you told her you probably didn't want me to contradict you. So, when she called, I answered. And we talked. About how much she missed you, about how much she worried for you all the way in New York, about how she hoped you would get a job out here and come back. I guess it was therapeutic for her, talking to me about you. I guess she thought I was the only person in the world who knew you as well as she did."

I swallowed. I'd wanted an explanation but this was hitting too close to home. Imagining Lucas being the one to talk my mother through the hardest time of her life when her own daughter had abandoned her was almost too much to bear.

"She called more and more and then finally asked me to meet with her, to come over for dinner. I was still building my company at the time. A good, home cooked meal was hard to come by. And talking to her about you was the only way I still felt close to you. So I went. While I was there, I saw that her screen door needed adjusted so I fixed it. She made a joke that she had plenty more projects around the house if I had the time. I joked back I would always help out for a hot meal. And then it just... happened. She invited me again the next month and the month after that until it became a sort of, standing date. Every month, I went over to her house, helped her fix something that was broken, and sat down for a meal with her. After a while, we didn't talk about you so much. Our conversations turned to her job at the library and my company's growing success."

I blinked, holding back tears.

"I guess it was good for me too. My own mother is back in Argentina. I haven't seen her since I left for UCLA ten years ago. I've always been afraid that if I go visit her, they won't let me back. And if she comes and visits me, she will draw attention to my own status. So your mom sort of... filled that void for me. And it was nice to be useful to someone again, to work on a house with my own two hands instead of staring at code all day long. When I made it big, I offered to buy her a new place, a house that I wouldn't have something new to fix every month, where she could be more comfortable and better off. But she turned me down flat, said she couldn't bear the thought of leaving that rundown old place and all its memories behind."

I stared at him, anger dissipated, feeling simply deflated. Lucas had been a better son-in-law to my mother than I'd ever been a daughter. Tears welled up in my eyes and began to fall, streaming down my cheeks. I choked out a sob and raised shaking hands to my face, wiping the tears away.

"Piper," Lucas said my name gently, sweetly, and knelt in front of me, taking my hands in his. "Piper, please, don't cry."

"I can't do anything right," I told him through the sniffles. His brow creased in confusion as he reached up and wiped the tears away with the pads of his thumbs. "My job is a joke. My marriage is a sham. I'm not even a good daughter."

Sobs wracked my body and my chest heaved as I took in a too-deep breath.

"Shh," Lucas said, soothingly, and then pulled me against him.

He held me there until my tears subsided and I had regained control over myself. I wiped my face and took slow breaths as I backed away from him, sniffling.

"I'm sorry," I told him. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be," he replied, simply. "You are a good daughter. You are kick ass at your job. And I happen to like this marriage very much."

I snorted a laugh and he smiled.

"That's better," he said at my reaction and reached up to wipe the last of the tears away. "Now, let's go home."

"You're working," I pointed out but he had already grabbed his jacket and was reaching an arm around me to guide me to the door.

"Not anymore."