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CHAPTERONE
MIRA
Peering downthrough cotton so faded it was transparent, Mira stepped into the only pair of clean underwear left in her drawer, pulling them up carefully so they didn’t disintegrate on their way over her thighs. While she hooked her last clean bra behind her back—a bright yellow disaster that could double as caution tape—she tried to remember where she’d bought it. And, more importantly, why? Halloween maybe? That year she’d gone all in as a Minion because Ian had wanted to be Gru?
She frowned at her reflection in the full-length mirror, but she only had herself to blame. This was what happened when she slept in instead of doing laundry—she spent the day in the Mummy’s panties with a Minion’s tits.
Taking a black tank dress out of her closet, she slipped it on, smoothed it down over her hips, and shoved her feet into a pair of red canvas flats. “Ian! You up?” she shouted, walking down the hall while slinging her hair up into a ponytail. “You need to leave in—”
“Five minutes,” he grumbled, a spoon of Golden Grahams in suspended animation on the way to his mouth. “School’s started at the same time all year long, Mother.”
Ignoring her son’s general fourteen-year-old grumpiness, she kissed his head through his curls and said, “Sorry, I slept in.”
“Neat,” he slurred, mouth full.
“I was up late making tarts.” She opened the fridge and pulled out the OJ. “For Madigan and Ashley’s wedding.”
“Tarts? I thought you were making their cake.”
“I’m making both. Is Mimi up?”
He shook his head. “I heard her walking around in the middle of the night again.” Standing from the table, he shuffled into the kitchen, rinsed his bowl in the sink, and put it in the dishwasher before she had to remind him.Miraculous.Hoisting his backpack over his shoulder, he said, “Gotta go.”
She’d borne witness to every single day of Ian’s existence, but it still shocked her, the way he’d miraculously transformed overnight into a tall, deep-voiced man-child with an Adam’s apple budding from his throat, hair sprouting on his upper lip, and an occasional ’tude that made her want to check his skin for devil marks.
“Wait!” She skirted around the counter, intercepting him before he could bolt down the stairs, spreading her arms wide. “Hugs?”
With a tight, obliging smile, he leaned in for the most perfunctory single-arm non-hug hug in the history of humankind.
Pulling back, she studied him for the brief moment he allowed it, noticing the way his shoulders drooped, the shadows smudged under his hazel eyes. “You okay, buddy?”
“I’m fine,” he replied flatly.
“You sure?”
“Yep.”
“I’d know if you weren’t telling me the truth,” she said, arching a brow. “Because you came from me. I grew you—”
“Mom.”
“—inside my body.”
He palmed his forehead. “Seriously, could you, like, not be so weird all the time?”
Taking a moment to straighten his backpack strap, she said, “I could try, but I think I’d be setting us both up for disappointment.”
After watching him roll his eyes at her for the millionth time before he jogged down the stairs, she sighed the eternal sigh shared by mothers of quiet teen boys, poured juice into two glasses, cracked four eggs into a pan, and walked to the back room to wake up her mom.
* * *
“Mira!”her mom called out from the kitchen. “Is it granulated or brown sugar for the snickerdoodles? I can’t remember.”
Three years ago, Linda Harlow could have recited every single Glazed and Confused recipe backward and forward, especially since she’d written most of them. But every day, something new slipped through the cracks. Today, it was the snickerdoodles.
“Did you check the binder?” Mira asked, pushing the kitchen door open, finding her mom with a wooden spoon in one hand, a measuring cup in the other, an empty bowl in front of her, and her salt and pepper hair looking unwashed, unbrushed. At least it was shower night.
“The binder…” Her mom glanced to her left, then her right, then frowned, confused, lost in that way that gave Mira’s heart an express ride down to her stomach. Because it wasn’t only forgetting. It wasknowingshe was forgetting. That this was something she should remember but couldn’t.
