Page 57 of Mr. Big Shot

I looked over my shoulder. “Mom, you expecting someone?”

My pregnant sister and her brood of children were already in the house. I knew they were present and accounted for because the noise level was at the usual crippling decibel. My brother-in-law was working up at the hospital until closer to dinnertime, so that left…the poor unsuspecting neighbor girl my mother had roped into her scheme unwittingly.

My mom got to the door before I did, and she whipped it open with a chorus of hellos.

“Everyone! Everyone!” she called, expecting a crowd of people to join her.

I don’t know why she kept saying “everyone”; it was just me, standing in the foyer a few feet away from her. Corinne and the kids were upstairs in the game room.

“This is Emily,” she said, ushering the girl into her house.

She couldn’t have been a day over twenty. Younger even than Scarlett.

My mother looked at her with unabashed pride then told me, “Emily is a vet tech at the sweetest little animal hospital. She saves all sorts of critters every day, which I just find so admirable. Tell us about your work, Emily.”

Emily, who up to this point had allowed my mother to lead her in and hold on to her arms with good-natured confusion, now made a point to step away and smile.

“Oh, it’s…just like you said. I’m a vet tech.” Her tone changed, hardened. “You mentioned you wanted me to come over and pick up a cake for my grandma?”

Poor, poor Emily. She had no idea she was being used as a lamb for slaughter.

I looked at my mom. “This is a new low.”

My mom batted away my comment as her smile stretched bigger than ever. “Cake! Yes. I’ll go get it. Hudson can entertain you for a moment.”

She hurried away, and I wondered if she’d even made the cake yet. Surely she wasn’t in there preheating the oven.

Emily looked at me for the first time and blushed, then looked down at the ground, the wall, the ceiling. She wanted out of there ASAP.

“Sorry about this.”

My mom came back into the foyer faster than I expected, carrying a Tupperware cake carrier that, for all I know, wasn’t even filled with a real cake. Had she thought that far ahead in her master plan?

“Here you go,” she said, trying to hand it off to me.

I didn’t take it. “She can obviously carry that Tupperware by herself.”

It weighed a couple of pounds, if that.

She stepped closer and lowered her voice. “Hudson Samuel Rhodes, you will walk this fine young woman back to her grandma’s house or so help me God—it’s Christmas, Hudson! Christmas!”

Outside, I walked Emily back to her house, holding the cake. It was so light a baby bird could have carried it across the yard.

Emily looked sidelong at me with a tense expression. “I’m in a serious relationship, just to be clear.”

Oh good grief. “That’s fine. Ignore my mother.”

She looked warily over her shoulder. “She’s watching us through the kitchen blinds.”

Of course she was. “I’m sorry. Don’t be worried about your grandma having to live next door to her. My mom is relatively harmless. I think she’s just had too much eggnog.”

At Emily’s doorstep, I passed off the cake to her.

“It’s cool,” Emily said. “You can go now. Tell your mom I’ll bring her Tupperware back after my grandma’s finished with the cake.”

Inside her house, my mother was waiting for me with clasped hands and hopeful puppy dog eyes. “Well!?”

I walked right past her. “Congratulations. They’re getting their locks changed. Maybe adding some steel bars to the windows as we speak.”

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