Trials and Tiaras (Untouchable #7) - Heather Long Page 0,106

brain bleach.

She laughed at me as I headed for the kitchen. Mom was going to kill me at this rate. Death by embarrassment.

I carried out the bread and ratatouille and found Mom and Frankie still chatting in the living room. Mom had an arm around her, but Frankie didn’t look remotely embarrassed or upset.

Winning.

If anything, she was smiling.

My heart did a little high five with my ribcage. I loved that Mom and Frankie got along. There was a genuine warmth there. Hell, Frankie even liked my sisters, and I couldn’t say that three out of every seven days.

“Food,” I said. “Did you want me to get your wine, Mom?”

“Thank you, sweetheart. Frankie, we have soda, or do you want water?” Mom looked at her. “There’s iced tea in the fridge too, I think, and lemonade.”

“Ooh, lemonade sounds good.”

“On it.”

When I got back, I set out the drinks and slid into my spot next to Frankie. Technically, I could have sat across from her, but I’d rather sit where I could put an arm around her or press my leg up against hers.

“I forgot how much I loved these,” Frankie admitted as she added two of the stuffed peppers to her plate. I passed the ratatouille to her and broke up the bread, while Mom grabbed hers. After their plates were full, I grabbed some for me.

Another perk of the girls not being here—we didn’t have to share, and there was going to be more than enough for everyone to have seconds.

“I’ll make sure you have the recipe for it before you kids move,” Mom told her. “In fact, Frankie, as soon as you’re feeling better, Carly and I both want to go over some recipes and anything else you might need.”

“Hey,” I complained. “Why don’t I get the recipes?”

Mom snorted. “Because you’ll eat just about anything, Jacob. But if you want, come along. Coop too. I don’t suppose Archie and Bubba cook?”

“Ian does,” Frankie told her. “He’s got a lot of the basic stuff down. Archie’s kind of hopeless.”

I snickered. “He’s not hopeless, he just gets distracted. If you put it to him like a problem he has to solve, he’d nail it every time.” Maybe. Firm maybe. To be honest, it was good there was something he wasn’t the best at. We all needed our humbling moments.

“Well, we’ll figure it out,” Mom said. “But Carly and I still want to get you set up. Living in New York will be different from here—different weather, different demands. Have you kids decided what you’re doing with your cars once you’re in the city?”

We were most of the way through dinner before it hit me that Mom had pretty much pulled every single plan out of us for what happened after graduation, including the potential recording Bubba and Frankie were going to do over the summer before classes started in the fall. Frankie had even picked out her first round of classes, and she was only waitlisted for two of them.

Personally, I hoped she stayed on the waitlist for those two. She signed up for seven classes, and even coordinating, different degrees meant we only had core classes similarly, so we’d managed to get all five of us in three of the same classes together.

Archie and I would likely be running parallel tracks, but Bubba and Coop would be diverging, and Frankie was still undecided on her final major. She had a definitive interest in business of all things, but also in social work.

That made phenomenal amounts of sense. So, she didn’t have to lock that in first year, and she wanted to audit some classes before she made her final decisions. I had my personal bets on what she would end up doing.

It wasn’t until we’d made coffee and served up dessert that Mom brought out the big topic change. One I hadn’t been expecting when Frankie offered to start on clean-up, and before I could tell her no, Mom beat me to it.

“Not at all. I’ll take care of it later. I want to talk to you both tonight about something I wished I’d understood when your father and I got married and when we brought Klara into the relationship.”

I froze.

“Don’t look so worried, Jacob,” Mom said as she refilled her wine glass. “I promise to keep this as painless as possible.” But she flicked her attention to Frankie. “But I want both of you to understand a few things, to take from my experiences what you can, because I