“Hi,” I said when my mom walked into the family room. “How was it?”
“Let’s see,” she said. “Extremely uninteresting with a few moments of mind-numbing boredom.”
“Come on,” I said as she unbuckled her high heels and tousled her blond curls. She looked gorgeous in her strapless lavender jumpsuit. “Something funny must’ve happened.”
“Mmm…” She pretended to think. “Oh, every woman there asked for my number—”
“Iknewthey would.”
“—to pass along to their divorced sons.”
“Wait, ew.” I wrinkled my nose. “Did you tell them about Josh?”
“No, but they’ll find out soon enough.”
I gasped. “Mom, you didn’t!”
She kicked away her shoes. “Hey, I wasn’t going to give themmynumber!”
“Okay, but Josh is going to get all these bizarre texts telling him howbeautifulhe is and howdazzlinghe sounds and then they’ll ask if he’d like to grab a drink sometime at theirclub.”
“I know.” She beamed. “It’ll be amazing.”
“Did you have anything to drink?” I asked. She didn’t seem tipsy. Just loopy.
“I wish,” she answered through a gritted-teeth smile. “But apparently you only drinkwineat a wine club. They hide all the good stuff.”
“Huh, how odd,” I said dryly. My mom preferred whiskey to wine.
“Please remind me to make a dentist appointment,” she continued. “The one glass I had was so sweet that I’m going to need some cavities filled…” She trailed off, noticing Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy onscreen. “Crap, I missed the hand flex.”
I winced.You idiot, I thought.If you hadn’t passed the hand flex, you would’ve had her.
Pride & Prejudicewas my mom’s clickbait. If it was on TV, she watched it, obsessed with the scene where Mr. Darcy flexes his hand after helping Lizzy into a carriage. “It shows how moved he is,” she’d say reverently, “just from touching her hand…”
If we had the hand flex to look forward to, my mom would’ve collapsed on the couch and drifted off to the movie instead of popping open a Red Bull before grading her students’ assignments.
And Ireallydidn’t want to sneak out of my house with my mom awake, alert, and highly caffeinated in her study just off the front hallway.
“Well…” she said a few seconds later. “I’m gonna head to bed.”
My pulse spiked, a shock to the system. “What?”
“I’m going to bed,” she repeated. “Tonight took a lot out of me. I’m going to make a cup of chamomile—”
“Why don’t I make it?” I volunteered, heart racing. If I could avoid it, I didn’t want her going into the kitchen. “I was going to make some and go up soon too. Do you want honey?”
Ten minutes later, I climbed the stairs with two mugs of hot tea. My mom was in bed with a book. Her phone had been plugged into its charger and rested on her bedside table. “Thank you, sweetheart,” she said and gave me a kiss on the forehead. “I love you very much.”
“And I love you very,verymuch,” I replied, squashing my sudden guiltiness with a sip of tea. “Sleep well.”
“You too.” She smiled, but before I left her room, she asked if I’d locked the doors and turned out all the lights downstairs. Nights were the only time we truly shut down the cottage.
“Yes,” I lied. The lights were off and the front door was locked, but I had cracked open the back door so I could sneak out later. “All good.”
She snuggled into her pillows. “Good night, Lily.”
I swallowed hard. “Good night, Mom.”
