I could tell he didn't want to, but he did it. She rustled her hand through Conrad's hair until he finally wore a smile. She held a straight face for four whole seconds before erupting into a fit of giggles. She had the best poker face known to man. "You know what will?" We all stared at her. "Mold won't kill you," Susannah declared, laughing and pushing her hair out of her eyes. My mother picked up Conrad's rib, looked down at it, and then put it down again. With boys it was like that they fought and then it was over. I would say Jere's more of a cherub." He reached out and tousled Jeremiah's hair roughly. Why shouldn't I?" The two boys looked at each other from across the table for a second. "I do spoil them," Susannah said, touching Conrad's shoulder, Jeremiah's cheek. "I was a neglected child who was fed only old food that nobody else wanted." My mother suppressed a smile and pushed the potato salad toward me. "Belly was raised on leftovers, weren't you, bean?" "I was," I agreed. "Enjoy it, Laurel." "I swear, you spoil these boys, Beck,'' my mother said, and everything felt normal, like any other last night. I'll eat it." Conrad put his hands up in surrender, and then he stabbed the rib with his fork and dropped it on my mother's plate ceremoniously. "Would it kill you to eat a little mold? Just scrape it off. It felt like I hadn't laughed in a long time. Then Conrad said, "This rib has mold on it," and we all started to laugh again. We all laughed, and it felt like a relief. He said, "This potato salad tastes like bad breath." "I think that would be your upper lip," Conrad said. We were all pretty quiet until Jeremiah broke the silence like breaking the top of a crème brulee. Conrad kept sneaking looks at me, and every time I looked back, he looked away. We sat around the kitchen table picking off of foil-covered plates. It was a smorgasbord of old food that no one felt like eating.
#Read the summer i turned pretty online free plus
There was clam chowder too, and half a rack of ribs, plus Susannah's potato salad from more than a week before. My mother heated up two frozen pizzas, reheated lo mein and fried rice, made a salad out of pale celery and tomatoes. That night for dinner we ate everything that was left in the fridge. I knew what my mother would say if she felt any grains on her feet. "Don't worry too much about the sand," Susannah would whisper when she'd see me going over the kitchen floor with a broom for the third time. She'd say, "Would you ask someone else to brush your teeth for you, or lace up your shoes, just because you could? "The answer was no. My mother actually liked to clean and didn't believe in housekeepers or maids or in other people doing what she considered our work. It was like a secret between us, and I liked that. She covered the phone with one hand and whispered guiltily, "Don't tell your mom, okay, Belly?" I nodded. I caught Susannah calling them once, scheduling an appointment. What she didn't know was that Susannah had cleaners come in after we left and before we came back. "So it's all ready for next summer," she'd say. She was the one who insisted everything be just so. We washed all the sheets and swept up the sand, made sure all the boogie boards and floats were in the basement, cleaned out the fridge and packed sandwiches for the drive home. (AnyBooksFree) Chapter forty -five I hated the last day before we left, because it was cleanup day, and when we were kids, we weren't allowed to go to the beach at all, in case we brought in more sand.
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