Page 119 of Playing With Danger

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“Sophie, you should sit down,” my mother said from behind me. “Let me finish up lunch.”

It had only been three weeks. I was not used to this mother who was more of a mom than a mother. Albeit a bossy mom, but not overbearingly so.

And she was right. So I pulled up my maturity and didn’t fight it.

“Okay, Mom.”

I caught her startled gaze before I slowly—since that was the only speed I had—walked out of the kitchen to the couch.

“Does Valentine like mustard on his turkey sandwiches?” she called from the kitchen.

“Yes. But no tomatoes for him.”

“Got it.”

My eyes caught on the mountain of legal forms on the coffee table then slid to my closed laptop.

A miracle of all miracles had happened and while I was in the hospital my mother had emailed my clients for me and explained I’d been in an accident and would be in the hospital recovering for a week. She’d also replied to the returned emails of well wishes and concern. Then she took it a step further and took over my phone, fielding calls and taking messages. Those were all miracles, but when I heard her on the phone with my new bowling alley client I listened to her reassuring him I was the best in the business and it would behoove him to be patient and wait for me to send him my marketing plan. Further from that, she offered to go to the bowling alley and personally record the footage I needed of the lanes that had been redone.

This freaked me out. And when she left the hospital to go home I asked Valentine if he was sure I wasn’t dying.

“I think you being taken woke her shit up, baby,” he explained.

“More like shook the devil out,” I snarked.

“No doubt she loves you, Soph. Just somewhere along the way it got twisted in her head. She’s untwisted it now.”

And that was it.

My mother had untwisted it and become my mom.

She also loved Valentine.

Hayden was a work in progress, mostly because he had years of experience with Lorelai and it would take a lot for her to prove to him she wasn’t going to turn back into a harpy. But also because Hayden had closed himself off in a way that worried me. Valentine promised he was working on Hayden and he wasn’t going to allow him to sink too far into his guilt. But I hated he felt guilt at all.

My sister had played him.

I hadn’t learned about the fullness of what Khloe had done until day three after I woke up. More of my memory came back and I remembered what she’d said about the mushrooms. It was then Valentine filled me in on what his friend Brady had found on her computer. She’d done a lot of research on deadly mushrooms, rat poisons, how to make arsenic, tasteless poisons. The bitch was insane and I no longer felt bad about calling her a bitch. First, she tried to kill me for our father’s money. Second, she was my sister and sisters are allowed to call their sisters a bitch.

Our father.

The man who abandoned me and my mom when I was two. He’d started another family after he left us. I wasn’t surprised—he’d been gone from us for over thirty years—but it was strange knowing about it now. Brady had given Valentine a whole workup on my father’s life, everything he could find to build a timeline of the years he’d been gone. I hadn’t read it and I didn’t know if I ever would. I was curious but it just didn’t matter enough for me to tear open old wounds that would have no impact on my future happiness. I offered the report to my mom to look at but she felt the same as me. Which shocked me, because I knew she still had some love for the man who was once her husband.

“Onward from here, Sophie Lynn. No looking back, my sweet daughter.”

I nearly choked when she’d called me sweet daughter.

This new mom was freaking me the hell out. Valentine told me I’d get used to it. He was probably right, I would. In about sixty years.

“Have you thought about the furniture I showed you?” My mom’s question pulled me out of my thoughts. “Nathan said the dark wood would suit Valentine. It was more manly than the whitewash, but if your bedclothes are dark it would still be manly.”

Furniture again.

This topic was going to be the death of me.

“I don’t think the nightstands will work, Mom, they’re too bulky.”

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