“Mom, that’s why you brought me.”
“Oh, Roland. That’s not why.” His mom laughed, but it also sounded tired to him.
At least she should be able to be perky for the family. Although, he kind of wished she wouldn’t be, so they could see a glimpse of what he’d been seeing for the past several weeks, almost a month now.
They walked to the porch, with his mother commenting aboutthe Christmas lights that they had strung up on it and how pretty the tree looked from the window.
He thought he felt a few drops of sleet coming down and thought about his rendezvous with his partner tonight. They would just be talking about what they were going to do tomorrow night, and he honestly was looking forward to it.
“I’ll get the door, Mom,” he said, reaching out to grab it so she didn’t have to.
She allowed him to open the door, and they stepped through, calling out to the house to let them know they’d arrived.
Summer hurried forward.
“Mom! It’s so nice to see you,” she said, coming in and giving her a big hug. “Here, I can take that.” She offered to take the casserole out of Roland’s hands.
He figured she could put it somewhere, and he allowed her to take it, holding onto the bag of potato chips that his mom had brought as well.
It wasn’t like her to bring something that wasn’t homemade.
“What’s that?” Summer asked as the bag crinkled when she took the casserole.
“Oh, I just—I saw those potato chips in the store, and I thought about how much the family would enjoy them,” his mom said, and he thought maybe Summer did a double take.
She hadn’t been in the family since birth, as he had, but surely she knew how odd that was.
Gilbert came out next, and he held his hand out for the bag.
“Little bro brought chips? That’s a shortcut,” he said with a laugh after he had given their mom a perfunctory hug.
“Those aren’t mine, those are Mom’s,” Roland said, waiting for his brother’s reaction.
“Mom, you got them on sale, huh?” That was not the reaction he was looking for, but he gave a mental shrug. Maybe he really was just imagining it.
“Come to the kitchen and give me a hand if you want to,” Summer said to his mom with a grin, knowing that she would go.
“Well, thanks. I think I’ll go to the table and sit down though. I want to make sure to get a good seat.” She tried to sound chipper, but it wasn’t hard for Roland to hear the exhaustion in her voice.
That stopped both Gilbert and Summer in their tracks.
Terry and Judd had been coming out of the hall, and they stopped as well.
Amy had been walking in from the dining room, holding the hand of one of the girls, and she stopped with her mouth open. Jones ran into her and said, “What are you doing?” before he too fell silent, although it was obvious he didn’t know what they were all shocked about.
“I think you might have been right about Mom,” Judd said slowly.
“Yeah,” Amy agreed immediately.
“What did I miss?” Jones said.
“We can talk about it at the table,” Summer said, giving everyone a warning glance.
There was a lot of murmuring and talking under one’s breath rather than the normal hustle and bustle and laughter that accompanied these meals.
As the food prep was finished and casseroles and containers were set on the table, everyone filed in, and there was a solemn air that had never been there before.
Roland felt rather justified but also a little bit scared.
