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Serena ducks her head, but not fast enough to hide the laugh that shakes through her shoulders.
“Do you have a mother, Serena?” There are so many normal questions she could have asked.
“Yes.”
“Would I like her?”
Serena considers it with considerably more seriousness than the question deserves. “Probably. She knows everything about everyone in her neighborhood and has been involved in several disputes regarding property lines.”
Nora's face softens with immediate affection. “Oh, I love her.”
“You have never met her.”
Nora waves that away. “I don't need to.”
“She also has significant difficulty throwing things away.”
“Sentimental.”
Serena's mouth flattens. “Pathological.”
My mother doesn't miss a beat. “Resourceful.” She turns to me. “We'll need to meet her before the wedding.”
My lungs briefly forget their only job. I cough hard enough that Serena glances over, but only for a second. She's too busy staring at my mother like she has just introduced an entirely new variable into an already unstable experiment.
This is it. The moment Serena realizes that whatever marginal benefit she gets from having sex with me is not worth the genetic material attached to it.
“Mother.” I drag the word out through clenched teeth.
She turns to me with wide, innocent eyes. “What?”
“You met her forty-five seconds ago.”
Nora lifts one shoulder. “I have excellent instincts.”
“You paid four thousand dollars to have electromagnetic grief removed from your bedroom.”
She doesn't so much as flinch. “And I slept beautifully afterward.”
A strangled sound comes from beside me.
I turn. Serena has her lips pressed together so tightly they've nearly disappeared, one cheek hollowed where she's biting down on it. Faun is tucked contentedly against her chest, looking significantly less conflicted about the situation.
“You think this is funny.”
She schools her face. “No.”
“You're smiling.”
“I am experiencing an involuntary muscular response.”
Nora beams at her. “Oh, I adore you.”
And the truly horrifying thing is that Serena looks at my mother like the feeling might already be mutual.
Twenty minutes later, they're sitting beside each other at the desk.
I was here for all of it, and I still don't know how this happened.
