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Chelsea’s mouth twisted, like she was chewing on words before spitting them out. “If I call him, I’m trying to get him back. If I don’t call him, I’m trying to get him back. There’s no winning, so why should I even bother to answer your ridiculous accusations?”
With that show of pointless petulance, the last string of hope Jo had been holding stretched and broke, and the darker possibilities she’d been trying to deny snapped into focus. “I need you to hear me. This situation is at a dangerous crossroads—a very dangerous crossroads. The kind where it’s easy to slip into the kind of bad choices like the ones Julia and Chris made. I don’t want to see anybody hurt, including you. If you’re going to be a part of our lives—and that’s inevitable at this point—I’d like it to be in the healthiest, most honest way possible, so we can all be on your side. So I’m going to ask you again to think carefully about what you want, and what course of action is going to bring you happiness.”
Chelsea’s chin lifted. “Is that a threat?”
Jo chose her words carefully. There was next to no chance that anything she’d said was going to penetrate, and that left her only one course. “Your actions have consequences without any intervention from me. I’m just here giving you the advice I’d give to my sister or any of my friends if they were in your situation. The advice I hope they’d give me. Do some thinking. Choose carefully.”
Chelsea’s eyes flashed and a plastic smile creased her face. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you checking in on me, Jo. Thank you so much for your visit.” She stood. “But I have a thousand tasks I need to attend to, so I’ll see you out now.”
CHAPTERSIXTY
“Ugh.” Jo extracted a handful of flesh and seeds from the pumpkin on the table in front of her, and sent a teasing glare at Isabelle. “How do I get roped into doing your dirty work every year?”
“Because you understand the importance of tradition,” Matt said as he watched Emily draw a lopsided triangle on her pumpkin’s squat face.
“Here, try this out.” Sophie pulled a hand mixer out of her cabinet, attached the beaters, and gave it to Jo.
Jo took the mixer like she was handling a venomous snake. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“I saw a video on YouTube that said if you run it around the insides, it pulls all the stringy insides out lickety-split.”
“Have you tried it?” Jo asked.
“That’s your job.” Sophie laughed. “I stay in my lane.”
Jo stuck the beaters into the pumpkin and, with one eye squeezed shut, slid the power button to medium. When the pumpkin didn’t explode, she reopened the eye. “I’ll be darned. It works.”
“Did you carveyourpumpkin already, Aunty Jo?” Emily asked.
Jo rolled her eyes. “A pumpkin that large would take a month to carve. So we just drew a scary face on it.”
Emily thrust her hands onto her hips. “That’s cheating!”
Jo wagged a teasing finger at her. “Hey, you take care of your pumpkin and I’ll take care of mine.”
Keys clanked in the door, and Emily sprung up. “Daddy!”
Isabelle, temporarily forgetting she was too old to get excited about things, ran after her sister.
Jo glanced over at Sophie with a question in her eye.
“He’s here to take them trick-or-treating. I’m going to stay here and hand out candy.”
“But he’s using his keys again,” Jo said, putting a sing-song lilt into the words.
Sophie grabbed the cookie sheet filled with pumpkin seeds and took them to the counter, but not before Jo spotted the blush on her cheeks.
“Mama, we’re going to go put our costumes on!” Emily cried from the hallway.
“Finish your jack-o’-lanterns first,” Sophie called, separating out pumpkin seeds onto another cookie sheet.
Emily ran in, and grabbed Matt’s hand. “I finished drawing. Can you cut it even though it’s so small?”
“Of course.” Matt fired up the electric pumpkin carver and headed toward one of the drawn eyes.
“You’re not gonna mess it up, right?” Emily doubtfully eyed the pumpkin’s small, squashed sides.
“That all depends on how nervous you make me.” Matt widened his eyes in mock terror.
