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Chapter Three
“Are you ready to go, Lucy?”Harrison asked from the doorway.
Looking at the clock, Lucy realized that she had been working too intently on the report Mr. Montgomery had recently sent her. Pulling out the headphones, she put them on the charger she kept on her desk to be ready for the next day. It had taken less than a day to realize how much reading a secretary had to do, so she started using the headphones and having the computer read to her. It was a way to read without actually reading anything.
Ready to go, she was happy to see her stepmom’s husband, even if her stepmom would have been a better sight, but Sera was two months pregnant, and it was an awful pregnancy this time. The first two had been a breeze for her.
“Yes.” She sighed and closed down her computer. “How is it outside?”
“It started to snow, but it’s melting as it hits the ground, so not bad yet.” Harrison grabbed her coat from the tree and handed it to her. After knowing the man for seven months now, she liked him and loved him for her stepmom.
Grabbing her jacket from him, she slid it on and wondered what he thought when he looked at her, or any of her sisters, for that matter. The woman he was married to called them all her daughters but was only a decade older than the youngest of them. They should be peers, but each thought of the slightly older woman as their mom, always had. Her getting married hadn’t changed that.
Leaving the office, they went a short distance to the SUV her mom was waiting in. It was warm by the time they got there, and Lucy was glad for it after the cold, windy walk.
“How was your day today, Lucy Maud?” her mom asked with a smile. Her mom was the queen of smiles.
“It went okay, Seraphina.” She buckled her seatbelt and grinned. Her mom hated her actual name as much as Lucy hated being called Lucy Maud.
“Good. Mr. Montgomery wasn’t too mean today?” she asked as Harrison pulled away from the curb.
During the first weeks of her job, Lucy had made the mistake to say that he had been mean to her. Her mom hated when people were mean to her kids; she was a mama bear. So, from then on, she always asked in case she had to set him straight.
“No, he was great today.” She exaggerated on purpose.
“I think it snowed today because you both wore white.” Harrison pointed at the two of them.
“Don’t blame the weather on me, Harrison,” Sera stated coldly. Her pregnancy had made her moody. Lucy wanted to laugh at her mom’s husband; this was his first pregnancy with her. She was very emotional when pregnant, and he was just finding that out. Lucy had seen her through two already.
“Lucy, I think you have to take your mom out for drinks,” Harrison usually didn’t call the woman her mom.
“She can’t drink.”
“Maybe just get the girls together for some fun,” Harrison restated.
“I will call.” Sera sat up and pulled out her phone, already dialing, not noticing that the gathering was supposed to be for her.
“I just want my wife back in the clothes I sent her out in,” Harrison told Lucy with a grin. They liked to change shirts when they got a few drinks in them, or none at all. Someone always had a better shirt on than someone else.
“I can make no promises, Harrison.” Lucy’s mom was her own person, and nobody could control her. He had been in her life long enough to know that.
By the time they dropped off Lucy at home, two blocks from their own house, the five sisters and one mother were going out on the town in an hour. Or at least to The Grog, which was the closest bar to Lucy’s home—the house they had all been raised in.
The house was eerily silent as Lucy let herself in the unlocked door. It was never locked; even with only the two of them left living there, someone was almost always home. She worked days, and Agatha usually only worked at night. For years when there were eight people living there, the doors were never locked since people were in and out all the time. Sometimes the noise had been deafening, but not anymore.
After moving the requested chicken from freezer to fridge, she headed up to her room. No way was she wearing business attire to the bar. In the hallway, she hollered up the stairs to Agatha’s third-floor layer, “Are you ready yet?”
“No, just a minute!” her little sister called. If Lucy didn’t say anything, Agatha wouldn’t be ready. In fact, if Lucy didn’t drag her out the door in an hour, Agatha would blow it off.
“I have to change too!” she yelled and headed into the master bedroom, her bedroom now. Oddly, the entire floor was hers since Agatha hadn’t moved down to the second floor when the other sisters had slowly moved out over the last six months.
She slipped out of the off-white skirt and hung it in the closet. A year ago, she would have just thrown it on the floor, but dry cleaning cost too much money to do that with her work clothes.
Grabbing a pair of low-rise jeans, she shimmied them on and was ecstatic that they still snapped. Running her hands over her slightly rounded stomach, she wondered when she would get the nerve to tell her mom she was pregnant, tell anyone for that matter.
It’s not like she planned to get knocked up, but Harper’s announcement that she was no longer wanted at the catering business had sent her into a tailspin. Add to that her twin, Mabel, had married Lucy’s best friend Cliff, which she was happy about, well almost completely. Except, the night that they had gotten married, she had ended up with her on-again-off-again boyfriend, Kevin. Just one night, she had said, “screw this and screwed him.” That was five months ago now.
Pulling a gray T-shirt over her head, she hid it from everyone. Maybe they thought that she was gaining weight and didn’t want to say anything. Their sister Agatha had gone from dangerously skinny to a normal weight in the last year, so it could be that they didn’t want to say they noticed.
