Page 2 of XOXO, Yours

“Shit,” I say. “Everything okay?”

“I’m thinking dehydration.”

“Want me to grab Uncle Graham to take a look at her?”

“No. I’m taking her in. Let everybody know.”

So I let everybody know. In my family, that means I tell Mom, and then forty people know inside of a minute. Mimz goes straight for her purse and her keys, and it takes Pops, Dad, and a well-timed lie about her Buick being blocked in to keep her from hijacking it.

Then she sits down hard in a folding chair, takes Mom’s hand, and tells the rest of us, that while she doesn’t have official confirmation, she is certain that Cora is pregnant.

A baby.

Nobody knows whose. For the first time all night, nobody in my family has a single smart-ass thing to say.

I’m in my truck ten minutes later. My phone buzzes while I’m sitting at a red-light.

Oliver: Her sisters are on the way. Jules and Hope. Keep an eye out for them.

Oliver: Don’t be weird.

I don’t know why he thinks I’ll be weird. I’m never weird.

Saddle Creek Memorial on a Saturday night is basically three pickups, a security guard, and a waiting room that smells like floor cleaner. Oliver’s in the back with her. There’s nothing to do but wait, and I have never once in my life been any good at waiting.

I go hunting for coffee. I’m halfway down the hall when I hear her.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

Something smacks metal. Hard.

chapter

two

Jules

I’ve always hated the smell of disinfectant.

It likely dates back to whatever traumatic childhood event that landed me in foster care. In truth, I’m happy not knowing the specifics of what happened to or around three-year-old me. I’ve had a good life ever since meeting my foster sisters, Cora and Hope. We created a family together, and no amount of nonsense that life has thrown at us has separated us. We are each other’s ride-or-die, the three musketeerettes or whatever.

Which is why I am currently enduring the astringent, stinging smell of bleach.

Cora’s text came in at 10:52.

Cora: At Saddle Creek Memorial. Passed out at the party. I’m fine. DON’T FREAK OUT.

Historically, that is the single most freak-out-inducing sentence in the English language.

Hope and I were one terrible Hallmark movie into our standing Saturday movie night. We’d been snuggled on my couch. I’d already had a glass of wine, and there’s a rule in our family: nobody drives with anything in their system. Ever.

So Hope drove us to the hospital, and I’m not convinced she stopped at a single stop sign between my house and here.

The hospital waiting room’s television shows a cheerful man in a suit droning on about tomorrow's weather. He’s far too happy about a partly cloudy day. He’s clearly never sat in a chair like this one, orange plastic and bolted to its neighbors.

Hope paces the linoleum in front of me, her sneakers squeaking faintly on every turn. Four steps out. Pivot. Four steps back. Her ponytail swings with the motion, and every few seconds she glances toward the hallway where we know they’re examining Cora. It’s as if Hope believes she can will the doors open through the sheer force of her staring.

She's trying not to panic.