I Thought Love Had to Be Earned Through Chores, They Hugged Me novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Mom Chooses

Wesley didn't tell them that night.

He wanted Dad in the room.

"Friday," he said in the hall, after Odette had shut her door on both of us. "Breakfast. Everybody at the table. Nobody gets to cry their way out of a hallway."

"And the van?"

"Not the van. Not yet." He crouched so his eyes were level with mine. "If she knows we know about the van, she cancels it. Then Noreen just sends somebody else, some other day. I want to see who's driving."

So I didn't say anything about the van.

Dad came in from the airport at six the next morning, gray with no sleep.

Wesley had called him at midnight.

At seven we were all at the kitchen table.

Mom in her robe. Odette across from me in a white sweater, hair brushed, eyes clear. She'd slept fine.

I hadn't cooked.

Dad had made the coffee himself and it tasted like a tire.

Wesley put the photo in the middle of the table, face up, next to the sugar bowl.

"Mom. Look at it."

She looked.

At first she smiled a little, because it was Odette, young and laughing.

Then she saw the cardigan.

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