Page 124 of Hound Dog
“You ready for this?” he asked.
On the other side of the room, Mom was bent over with Addy, admiring Eleanor in her ball.
“Ready to break our mother’s heart? Hardly,” I answered.
I pulled the lid off my salad, then lightly drizzled the spinach with balsamic.
It took us almost a month to agree on when to tell Mom about Dad’s wedding… and our half-sister. There was always a reason to hold off. Either one of us couldn’t make it. Or we had an early morning at the bakery. Or whatever other excuse we could come up with.
But it was time. We’d waited long enough.
Neil reached across and opened up the cheese plate I’d prepared. “You don’t know that she’ll be broken-hearted. Maybe she’ll be relieved.”
“I doubt it,” I said. And based on Neil’s tone, I think he doubted it, too. “In the twenty-two years since dad left, have you ever seen Mom date?”
“No,” he grumbled and stabbed the knife into the block of aged cheddar.
“Have you seen her even try to date?”
“I get it, okay?” Neil hissed. “Excuse me for trying to be optimistic for once in my life.”
We all congregated around the table, Mom standing next to her chair at the head, as usual.
She looked different today.
I scanned Mom from head to toe, noting the way her fingers drummed the back of her chair. The bounce of her heel, tapping against the floor. The tight lines around her eyes and mouth.
“Mom,” I asked carefully. “Everything okay?”
I always joked as a kid that our mom was clairvoyant.
She could always tell the days that I was planning to cut school in the mornings before I had even left. She always knew the nights I had snuck out of the house, and I’d come home to her sitting in my room, waiting for me to return.
Hell, she’d even seemed to know the night I’d planned to lose my virginity. When I got ready for Homecoming, there had been a box of condoms tucked into my neatly folded underwear drawer.
“Everything is great,” she said quietly. “But I do have an announcement.”
From around the table, my siblings and I all eyed each other. Chloe and Elaina shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe we should, um, go finish preparing the dessert…” Elaina started to say, but Mom hushed her quickly.
“Absolutely not. You’re both part of this family, too. Sit.” Mom had on her don’t mess with me voice, so we all obeyed her, dropping into our chairs.
Icy fear twisted around my heart. The last time Mom had sat us all down like this to talk, she’d told us about her breast cancer diagnosis.
“You’re scaring me, Mom.” Addy took the words right out of my mouth.
All thoughts of Dad and his stupid wedding and our half-sister vanished.
Mom’s smile softened and she reached across to give Addy’s hand a squeeze. “It’s good news, I promise. My oncologist called yesterday. I’m officially in remission.”
The collective sigh of relief would have been comical if we hadn’t all been so terrified moments before. All at once, we launched to our feet and rushed to hug our mom.
Even Eleanor seemed to know this was a cause for celebration as she ran her little plastic ball into my toe.
Tearfully, Addy bent and scooped up the hedgehog, hugging that plastic ball as sure as though it was a soft kitten. “Maybe I will adopt this little gal.”
I grinned at my sister. It might seem weird, but a hedgehog as a pet fit her perfectly.
“You’ve known a whole day and didn’t tell any of us?” Liam teased, resting his head on Mom’s shoulder.
