Page 97 of What We Got Wrong

“Why’d she break up with you?” Quinn regretted bringing up this topic. “It was because you started dating Liv or Emma. I know it in my bones.”

“I never dated Emma,” Quinn groaned.

“And Liv?”

Quinn huffed, but there was no need to continue keeping it a secret. “Maybe we were…dating adjacent.”

“I knew it! Oh, I’m so mad at you,” her mom replied, and when Quinn looked at her in surprise, she shook her head. “No, no, no. Not about that. But your dad and I had a bet going.”

“Dad didn’t think we were together?” Quinn was shocked. He was usually the one starting the jokes back in college.

“Of course not that, silly girl,” her mom replied, howling at the idea. “Everyone knew. If you had told us in college, I had to buy ice cream. If it was after, he had to buy.”

“You two have always been ridiculous,” Quinn responded, shaking her head, though she joined in her mom’s laughter. “I will buy you ice cream tonight if you want.”

Their amusement was coated in a layer of grief, sure, but Quinn loved that they still found ways to laugh with her dad. The missing was ever present, but he’d brought so much joy into their lives, the memories they shared acting as a balm for their pain.

“I think you definitely should,” Jennifer replied, wiping tears from her eyes, a delicate mix of emotions. “Seriously, though. How was it seeing her after all this time?”

“It was…” Quinn hesitated, trying to give the question the weight it deserved. “Strange?”

“That long pause and all you’re going to give me is ‘strange?’ You’re joking, right?”

Quinn huffed at her mom again. “It was strange, Jennifer.”

“Are you going to see her again?” she asked, her tone full of hope. When Quinn just shrugged, her mom practically growled. “Quinnie. What the hell?”

“It’s complicated,” Quinn said softly. “We have a difficult history. It’s a lot, Mom. I honestly don’t know what to do.”

Her mom was briefly distracted by the timer going off. She pulled out one of the trays of cupcakes, rotating the one that stayed in the oven, resetting the timer for ten minutes and throwing in the next batch, before turning back to Quinn.

“Our life here has always been a lot,” she said. “We had you young, and then having two sets of twins… You were always so good, and so steady. I mean, you were organizing your own rides to swim by the time you were, like, eleven.”

“There was always a ton going on here. I was just trying to help,” Quinn replied.

“And I appreciated it, and so did your dad,” her mom said. “But Quinnie. It’s okay to get a little messy sometimes. You know that, right?”

Oof. Her mom had no idea how messy they’d gotten.

“I’ll think about it, Mom,” she promised. She was over this conversation, though, and it occurred to her that she had something in her back pocket that might actually distract her. “Guess who else I got to hang out with this week!”

When her mom just looked at her with raised eyebrows, she wiped off her hands and pulled out her phone, showing her the photo with Quinn, Mel, and Rhea Freaking Stewart. And she was right. With that, her mom allowed her to change the subject.

Quinn took her mom to get sundaes at her dad’s favorite spot on Friday night. They spent Saturday decorating cupcakes, and Quinn stayed in town long enough on Sunday to help with the delivery as well before finally getting in her car to drive home. She filled the rest of the weekend with laundry and exercise and trying not to have a full-on existential crisis.

Especially considering she knew what was waiting for her the next morning.

At least, she thought she did, but it was even worse than she expected when she sat down for the meeting that Mel had scheduled for 9:00 AM and watched as her friend pulled up their teleconference system.

“What are you doing?” Quinn asked. Mel waved a finger in her face, asking for one minute, and continued to log in. As the system entered the virtual meeting room, she was delighted and irritated in equal measure when Emma’s face came up on the screen. “You invited Emma to this meeting?”

“I just wanted to talk to my dear, sweet friend and see how she’s doing,” Emma said, flapping her eyelashes and grinning radiantly. “I would be there in person, except we have Kiddie Book Club at the library this afternoon and I don’t want to miss it.”

“I thought you got kicked out of that,” Quinn replied. She couldn’t exactly remember the story, but knew that Emma had done something to get them banned from the group.

“We were welcomed back, as long as I promised to no longer refer to any of the characters as ‘little bitches,’” Emma explained, and oh, right. That was it. “Although I do maintain my stance. That mouse did, in fact, exhibit little bitch behavior.”

Quinn didn’t bother asking which mouse she was referencing, instead teasing, “I just love that you’re teaching your kid to read with an analytical mind.”