The Belle and the Beard by Kate Canterbary (carter reed TXT) 📗

A hard, painful laugh twisted in my chest as I put the last of the groceries away. I shut the refrigerator and let my forehead fall against the cool surface. "I'm so full of shit."

"What was that?" my mother chirped. "Am I setting a place for you at the table tonight? There's plenty."

"No, I have to get back," I said, and I knew that was the right answer. Maybe not right but it was the answer. I had to get home and do something. I didn't know what but I knew it was essential.

"You're sure? It's no trouble." She paused, lifted her brows. "I haven't seen much of you lately."

"These are the consequences, Mom. You tell me to find someone special, you have to expect I'll spend time with her."

She reached for a dish towel. "It's a price I'll happily pay, my darling son."

"Anything else I can do for you while you have me here?"

"Mom!" Magnolia shouted from down the hall. "I think my water broke."

"Are you sure you didn't have a little accident? That happened to me more than once," she called back, suddenly wandering in circles around the kitchen.

She opened the oven, closed it. Opened the freezer, closed it. I watched, not sure what I was supposed to do in this situation.

"Mom! I would know if I had a little accident, don't you think?"

"I said the same thing," my mother replied, now opening the cupboards and drawers. "They sent me home from the hospital twice and told me to stop thinking my water broke every time I sneezed too hard."

"What are you looking for?" I asked.

She waved my question away. "Oh, nothing, honey, nothing. Just my phone. And my keys. Yes, I'm sure I left them around here. I should call your father. But he's at the golf course and you know he never takes his phone out with him. So, I'll have to call the course. And Rob! Good grief, he's in New York City. I don't even know who to call there. I have a friend, Eleanor Greene, who lives in New York City. But I haven't spoken to her in ages. She's such a complainer. Everything is a problem with her. That's why I don't call." Her keys and phone were on the small table beside the back door as always. "And my pocketbook, I'm looking for my pocketbook. I'm sure it's around here."

I blinked at her for a second. "Okay. You keep looking. I'll just check on Maggie." Around the corner, I found the door to the under-the-stairs powder room open and my sister tossing hand towels on the floor. "Everything all right?"

She pressed her foot to one of the towels and moved it around the floor. "Everything will be fine," she replied with forced calm. "Mom's flipping out, isn't she?"

I glanced back in the direction of the rattling pots and pans. My mother operated on three speeds: steamroller, scatterbrained, or stoned. There were no other options—I'd looked—but there were mix-and-match combos. She could be stoned and steamrolling, as was often the case, or stoned and scatterbrained. I didn't think she was stoned right now but she was running at max scatterbrained. "Not more than I'd expect."

"I knew I should've stayed with Zelda today," she murmured. "She was in class until four and I didn't want to bother her with exams coming up but at least I'd know she wouldn't lose her shit when it was go-time." She glanced up from her pile of tiny towels. "Everything will be fine."

I heard more clanging from the kitchen and a slammed door, which had me smothering a laugh while I rubbed my temples. My sister was having babies, my mother was panicking, and Jasper needed me to fight for her.

I asked for none of this.

Not one bit.

And yet— "Do you think you can make it into my truck? Is it too high for you to climb in?"

Magnolia pressed a hand to her lower back. "If you give me a hand, I'm sure it will be all right."

"And you can tell me where you need to go?"

She nodded. "Yeah. For sure. But you don't—"

"You really think I'd leave you here with Mom while she roots through the frying pans for her phone? Not a chance. We're feeding her some weed gummies and getting you to the hospital before anything else happens."

"What about Jasper? You need to talk to her."

I brought an arm around Magnolia's shoulders and led her out of the bathroom. "I'll talk to her later. Or tomorrow. I know she'll understand this."

We entered the kitchen to find Mom with her arm elbow deep in a bag of flour.

"We are not baking right now, Grandma," Magnolia said. "It's baby time. My husband is a four-hour train ride away and I had five more days to prepare and I didn't get the lemon chicken and orzo like I really wanted but it is baby time. Remove yourself from the flour."

"I thought I might've dropped my phone," she replied. "The last time I had it, I was thinking about baking some chocolate chip cookies but I don't think it's in here."

"Probably not," I said. Scatterbrained. So scatterbrained.

"Please do me a favor and get your special candies so you can calm the fuck down. I am going to give birth to two babies in the next few hours, preferably with my husband by my side, and I need you to turn all of this"—Magnolia waved both hands at my mother—"way down."

"Right, yes, okay." My mother dusted her arm off as she walked in another circle around the kitchen until she stopped at a cookie jar in the shape of a fat monk and plucked a small zip-top bag with a dozen purple jellies from inside. "Time to go, then!"

I grabbed the bag Magnolia pointed out near the door plus my mother's keys and phone, which were exactly where she'd