“Yeah. Well.” She shrugs, her gaze growing a little unfocused as she gets lost in her thoughts. “They talked to that doctor I threatened at Bayard Medical Center. I don’t know how on earth they dug him up.”
I stare at her, wide-eyed. “Mom. Doctor Soudek was incompetent. And he wasn’t listening to you. If you hadn’t yelled at him about changing my course of treatment, I might not be alive right now.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that I threatened to kill him.”
“In the heat of the moment! With your daughter in the middle of cancer treatments! Of course you would get worked up!”
“I know, Harlow.” She touches the glass again. “But that’s the exact point Scott says they’ll make. That I got ‘worked up’ about Iris going after you. That I’m an overprotective mother who would do anything to protect her daughter.”
“Fuck, Mom,” I whisper. “Fuck.”
She doesn’t give me a hard time for my language. She barely even seems to hear me.
Nausea roils my stomach. Did Hollowell know this would happen? Maybe his advice was intentionally bad, designed to set us up for a trap.
That fucking asshole.
“It’s okay, Low,” Mom says softly. “It’s not over till it’s over, right?”
She musters up a weak half-smile, so I try to do the same. She perks up a little as she straightens, and I can tell she’s deliberately changing the subject.
“How are you? How’re classes going?”
Ugh. Not great.
“They’re okay.” I shift a little in my seat. It’s not a lie, but I’m stretching the definition of the word “okay” to its limits.
“And you’re still staying with your friend River? Are you okay for money? Do you need anything?”
She asks the question as if she could provide it if I do, as if she’d do whatever it took to make sure I got whatever I need. But fortunately, without having to pay rent, my expenses are pretty minimal. If it gets desperate, I could always try to get back into a couple of those poker nights the kids from Linwood host, but so far I haven’t put too big a dent in the remainder of Mom’s savings.
“No, everything’s okay, Mom. I’m good. And I’m…” I pause, biting my lip as a million things I want to tell her crash against the walls of my chest. “I’m not staying with River anymore.”
“Oh.” She sits up straighter, worry sharpening her brown eyes. “Where are you staying? Are you with the Black family again? Samuel said you were welcome as long as you wanted.”
“I know he did, but I’m actually—I’m actually staying with Dax and Chase. You might’ve met them at one of Samuel and Audrey’s cocktail parties. Their parents are the Lauders?”
Her eyelids flicker for a second as she sorts through her memories, and then she nods slowly. “I think I remember them. The twins, right? With the brownish-red hair?”
I nod. The two boys really do stand out in a crowd. Their looks would be striking enough on just one of them, but the fact that their gorgeous features are repeated twice over makes it hard to look away.
“And that’s going okay?” Mom presses. “Their parents are okay with it?”
I can tell she hates this. Hates not being able to do normal parenting things like call their folks to make sure it’s all right for me to stay with them. Like know where her daughter is living, for fuck’s sake.
Maybe that’s why I open my mouth and say what I do—because I don’t want my mom to think she’s lost me completely, that she has no idea what’s going on in my life.
“Actually, I’m sort of dating them. Dax and Chase.”
She blinks a few times. I don’t think she’s even quite processed what I mean by that, but I rush on anyway before I lose my nerve. This wasn’t exactly how I planned on telling her, but it’s too late to stop now.
“And Lincoln. And River.”
Now she doesn’t blink. At all.
She stares at me for such a long, loaded moment that my stomach knots and unknots itself over and over as I wait for her to say something.
But she doesn’t. She doesn’t speak a word. I can’t hear anything through the phone’s earpiece but her soft breathing, the only indicator that she hasn’t turned into a statue.