Her eyes got wide, the nuts in her hand frozen in midair. “Don’t,” she said, in a rare stern tone, “even joke about that.”
“Don’t hang out in my room,” I replied.
“It’s hardly the same offense.” She was still giving me the evil eye. “Take it back.”
“Mom, honestly. Take-backs at your age? Really?”
“Do it.”
She wasn’t kidding. That’s the thing about someone who rarely gets upset: when they do, you notice. I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry. I was just making a stupid joke. Of course Luke and I aren’t getting engaged this summer.”
“Thank you.” She ate a nut.
“We’ll definitely wait until after freshman year,” I continued. “I think I’ll need to be adjusted to college before I start all the planning.”
She just looked at me, chewing. All right, not funny.
“Mom, come on,” I said, but she ignored me, going out into the hallway as there was another pop from upstairs. “I’m sorry. I’m just . . .”
She was still walking, towards the sound of the nail gun.
“. . . being stupid. Okay?”
After a beat, she turned around. From this distance, you never would have guessed she was thirty-six. With the same long, brown hair that I had, her body toned from regular workouts, she looked closer to late twenties, if that. It was the reason she was more often taken for Amber and Margo’s sister rather than their stepmother, why when we were kids she always got That Look at supermarkets and bank lines as people tried to do the math. They could never figure it out.
“You know,” she said finally, “I only get upset because I want you to have everything I didn’t.”
“The moon and more,” I said, and she nodded.
This was our thing, from the days before my dad, Amber, and Margo came into the picture, the days I didn’t even really remember. But she’d told me often of a book she read aloud every night when I was a baby, about a mother bear and her little cub who won’t go to sleep.
What if I get hungry? he asks.
I’ll bring you a snack, she tells him.
What if I’m thirsty?
I’ll fetch you water.
What if I get scared?
I’ll order all the monsters away.
Finally he asks, What if that’s not enough? What if I need something else?
And she replies, Whatever you need, I will find a way to get it to you. I will give you the moon, and more.
This, she always said, was how she felt as a teenage single mother, raising me alone. She had nothing, but wanted everything for me. Still did.
Now, she pointed at me with her free hand. “You behave yourself at that party. This is about Brooke and Andy, not you and your opinions.”
“You know,” I said, as she turned around again, “contrary to what you believe, I don’t actually think everything’s about me.”
Her only response was a snort, and then she was gone. The gun continued to pop as she climbed the stairs, but a moment later, it stopped. In the quiet following, I heard her say something, and my dad laughed. Typical. We might make fun of her, but when they were together, the joke was always on us.
“I heard that,” I yelled, even though I didn’t. More laughter.
Back in my room, I surveyed the damage, which was easy because that morning, like always, I’d left the place spotless: bed made, drawers shut, nothing on the floor or bureau tops. Now, I spotted Amber’s keys and sunglasses on my desk, my mom’s flip-flops parked under my bedside table. There was also a crumpled piece of paper on the floor beside my trash can. I sighed, then walked over and picked it up. I was just about to toss it in when I saw my mom’s handwriting and smoothed it out instead.
It was from one of the Colby Realty giveaway notepads, which were all over our house; you’d be hard-pressed to find anything else to write on. In her neat script it said simply, Your father called. 4:15 p.m.
I looked at my watch. It was 6:30, which meant I had less than a half hour before I needed to leave for Luke’s and the party. But this was more important. I took the note and went upstairs.
The first thing I saw when I stepped into the war zone that was currently our kitchen was my dad, shooting a nail into a piece of shoe molding by the pantry door. The kitchen itself was empty, as it had been since he’d been refinishing the floors. My mom was watching him from atop our new dishwasher, which was functioning as furniture, island, and catchall area until it got installed.
Bam! went the nail gun, and I jumped. My mom looked over at me, clearly thinking I’d come up to continue our conversation from earlier. When I held up the note, though, her expression changed.
“I was going to”—Bam!—“tell you,” she replied.
“But you didn’t.”
Bam! “I know. It was a mistake. I just got distracted when you came in all upset about—”
Bam! Bam!
I held up my hand, stopping her. “Dad!” I yelled. Another pop. “Dad!”
Finally, he stopped, then turned around, seeing me. “Well, hey there, Emaline,” he said, smiling. “How was your day?”
“Can you stop that for just one second?”
“Stop working?” he asked.
“Would you mind?”
He glanced at my mom, who stress-ate another handful of nuts. “All right,” he said, as easygoing as always, and put the nail gun down, trading it for a Mountain Dew sitting on the dishwasher. My mom and I were both quiet as he twisted off the top, taking a big sip. He looked at me, at her, then back at me. “Whoa. What’d I miss?”