A Time for Us - By Amy Knupp Page 0,7

as she scooped the remaining broccoli into a storage bowl. “I learned. I try to cook three or four nights a week. It’s just been an unusual week since you got home and this was my first opportunity.”

“And you let me sleep through it.” There was no accusation in Rachel’s voice, just an observation. She was kicking herself for not setting her alarm, frankly, but not because she was worried about missing any meals.

“You apparently needed it. You worked a double shift?”

Rachel nodded and sat down at the table, salivating at the plate of food her mom set in front of her. She popped a piece of cheesy broccoli in her mouth. Her mom sat across from her. Perplexed, she stared at her mom as she chewed.

“Do I have food on my face?” Jackie asked, touching her fingers to the corners of her mouth.

“Drop of cheese beneath your collar,” Rachel said. “How long did this take, Mom?”

Her mom shrugged. “Less than an hour. The meat had to simmer for quite a while, otherwise it would have been faster. It was no big deal.”

“That means you had to be home from work...before five?” Rachel couldn’t keep the scandalized tone out of her voice.

“My four-thirty canceled. There was no reason to hang around.”

Rachel narrowed her eyes at her mom and jabbed a bite of pork.

“You like it?” Jackie continued.

“It’s...fantastic.” The quality of the food was so not the issue here. “You never mentioned you’d taken up cooking.”

Her mom had never so much as shown an interest in food or the preparation of it, beyond fueling her driven body so that she could work some more.

“You’ve barely been home since you moved back,” her mom said.

“Before that.”

Jackie chuckled, crossing her arms over her chest. “You haven’t exactly talked to me a lot, Rach.”

“You know how crazy busy I’ve been, finishing my residency, getting ready to move back...”

“I know. I hope...” Her mom shook her head and left the sentence dangling. “I worry about you is all.”

Rachel laughed incredulously. “Mom. What are you worried about? I made it through med school. Top of my class. I’ve got the job I’ve always wanted.” Or a variation thereof. “This is what it’s all about. You know that! I’ve made it.”

Her mom knew it because Rachel had followed in her mom’s footsteps almost exactly, with the exception that her mother’s specialty of choice was cardiology instead of emergency medicine. Medicine was in the Culver blood. And though Sawyer was different in a lot of ways, both Rachel and her mother were type A, driven, almost obsessive about their careers of choice. It was something Rachel had always admired in her mother, something that made them closer, this similarity.

Except...her mom was worrying about her? Was that an effect that losing Noelle had had on her?

Warily, she affirmed, “I’m good, Mom. Are...you?”

Another similarity they had was the dislike of getting too personal with conversation. Neither was touchy-feely, neither was prone to emotional outbursts other than the random overtired temper tantrum here and there. It made Rachel uncomfortable to ask such a prying question.

“I’m doing really well, Rach.” Her mom’s voice sounded happy, but...two years ago, leaving the office a half an hour before it even closed would have been unheard of for Dr. Jackie Culver.

“Okay, then,” Rachel said skeptically. “I’m glad. Just a little freaked out by your new hobby.”

“Do you like what you’re eating or not?” Her mom gestured smugly to her half-empty plate.

“I’m completely impressed, as I said.” Rachel couldn’t imagine the hours it must have taken for her mom to become comfortable in the kitchen when, previously, toasting Pop-Tarts had been her specialty.

Her mother stood. “Okay, then. Less questioning, more eating. I need to get going.”

It took Rachel a few seconds to remember what day it was and where her mom must be going. The meeting. To plan her sister’s memorial benefit.

The food she’d wolfed down so far settled like a rock in her gut, and her instinct was to push the plate away. That, however, would make her mom suspicious. More than suspicious.

She waited for another round of how-great-this-is-going-to-be-you-should-join to begin. Her chest tightened and she felt unreasonably hot all of a sudden. She should have tried to get an extra shift tonight. Every Wednesday. That would stop the badgering, the pleading, the guilt....

Well, no. Nothing would ever stop the guilt. Any of it.

Instead of trying yet again to get Rachel to go with her to the meeting, Jackie merely ran a dishrag over the