Chapter Sixteen
“Honestly, Penelope?” Mom fixed Poppy with a glare that could curdle milk. “What were you thinking?”
Poppy paused with her hand on the refrigerator door. She didn’t have the faintest idea what she could’ve possibly done to
piss her mother off in the five minutes since she’d stepped through the door. Obviously, she’d done something.
Oh wait, that’s right. She’d stepped through the door. “I was grabbing a soda, Mom. That’s not a crime, is it?”
Out in the den, the rest of the family was gathered, Dad and Jessica and Dillon and their spouses and six collective children;
Mom’s sister, Donna; and Dad’s two brothers, Craig and Mark, and their wives. Her cousins, Andrew, Stacee, Emma, Brittany,
and Peter, all older than her by at least ten years, each of them married, their spouses and gaggle of children, Poppy’s first
cousins once removed, also in attendance. Her niece, Maddie, had brought her fiancé. The Oregon-Oregon State game was playing
on the TV, Oregon up at the half, and Poppy didn’t want to miss more of it than she already had. She’d only planned to pop
into the kitchen for a drink, not have it out with her mother. Best-laid plans . . .
Mom looked like she’d swallowed a lemon. “Do you know how mortifying it was for your father and I to learn—from the Winston-Mayfields no less—that our daughter got into a fight on national television?”
Jesus. Poppy hung her head with a sigh. Not this. “It wasn’t a fight, Mom. Someone broke onto the carpet, and I stopped them. And
honestly, how does hearing it from the Winston-Mayfields make a difference?”
“Because. It’s all anyone at the club can talk about. Your poor father hasn’t been golfing in weeks.”
Boo fucking hoo. What boring lives people led if they were still nattering on about what happened at the WMAs. Even the tabloids
had moved on, her tackle old news. “Shoulder season’s over. It’s almost December. Dad wouldn’t be golfing now anyway.”
“That is entirely beside the point.”
“What exactly is the point?”
Mom threw her hands up. “I want to know what you were thinking!”
“To be fair, it all happened really fast, so I wasn’t really thinking as much as I was—”
“Clearly. That much was obvious.” Mom sighed and shook her head, the textbook picture of disappointment. Poppy just couldn’t win.
“And to think, this happened on Cash’s big night.” Mom pursed her lips. “I hope he forgave you.”
Poppy closed her eyes and counted to ten. There wasn’t anything to forgive because she hadn’t done anything wrong. That’s
what everyone—Cash, Lyric, Rosaline—told her. They had been there. They would know. Mom wasn’t going to get under her skin
and make her start doubting herself, but maybe Poppy could still make her understand that it hadn’t been rash—okay, it had
been rash, but it hadn’t been wrong. “Cash isn’t mad, he’s—”
“That boy is a saint, is what he is. I hope you realize how very lucky you are that he even gave you this job. God knows what you’d be doing right now if he hadn’t.”
Cash was no saint, but yes, Poppy was very lucky, and she didn’t need anyone to tell her. “I’m well aware of how lucky I am.
Trust me.”
Mom looked like she highly doubted that. “You could try acting like it.”
Jesus Christ. Poppy pinched the bridge of her nose. “If you want to know what I was honestly thinking, it was that Lyric might
have been in danger. Okay? That’s why I did what I did.”
“In danger?” Mom scoffed like it was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. “Really, Penelope, it’s not like the woman
had a gun.”
“No, Mom,” she drawled, eyes rolling. “She wouldn’t have had anywhere to put it.”
Mom looked deeply unamused. “Don’t be crass.” The timer on the oven dinged, and she snatched the oven mitts off the counter.
“Danger.” Her laugh was mirthless. “My God. You always were such a dramatic child. Always making mountains out of molehills.” She reached inside the oven and
pulled out a green bean casserole that looked wet, the French-fried onions soggy. She set the casserole dish down on the counter
beside the turkey that was resting, not tented with foil, ensuring the bird was going to be bone dry. She ripped off her oven
mitts. “I suppose some things never change.”
Poppy flinched, hand falling to her side.
It wasn’t dramatic for a child to want her parents to pay attention to her. No more than it was her fault that it was only
when she accidentally set the kitchen on fire or fell out of a tree and broke her arm that they remembered they had another
daughter. That Poppy existed.
She inhaled slowly and then blew out her breath, stealing a few seconds to gather her composure.
Someone ought to keep a level head and god knew it wasn’t going to be her mother.
She had some nerve calling Poppy dramatic.
“What exactly do you want me to say, Mom? That I’m sorry? Is that what you want to hear?”
She wasn’t, but she just might say it, if it meant she could escape the kitchen.
Mom rounded on her, and Poppy’s stomach sank, all too familiar with the pinched look on Mom’s face and the brittle look in
her blue eyes. “Your actions have consequences, Penelope.” Her voice quivered and her chin wobbled the way it tended to before
the waterworks started. Her hand flew to her throat. “I would’ve thought that after what happened last year, you would’ve
learned that. I suppose that was simply too much to hope for.”
Poppy’s breath left her like she’d been sucker punched in the solar plexus. Fuck. Mom could’ve backhanded her, and it wouldn’t have hurt as badly as being told that she was once a fuckup, always a fuckup.
That the last year she’d spent working her ass off to get better, be better had, in her mother’s eyes, been entirely for naught.
Poppy made mistakes. God knew she did. Sometimes it felt like all she did was make mistake after mistake after mistake, but
she was trying, and—it’s not like she wanted to fuck up. She hadn’t a year ago and she didn’t want to now, and if Mom knew her even in the slightest, she’d know Poppy’s
biggest fear was letting down the people she loved, being a disappointment. That sometimes she couldn’t sleep, the fear of
messing up keeping her awake at night. That she’d do anything in her power to avoid that fate. That she was always, always,
always going to be harder on herself than anyone else because of it.
She pinched her lips tight to keep them from trembling. It did nothing to stanch the tears welling up in her eyes, threatening to spill over if she so much as blinked.
Mom set her hands on her hips and sighed. “Now is not the time for your histrionics.”
“My histrionics?” She laughed and a renegade tear slipped down her cheeks. She scrubbed angrily at her face. “That’s rich.”
Her lips pursed. “Penelope—”
“Poppy.” She sniffed hard and dragged the side of her hand under her nose. “No one calls me Penelope.”
And if Mom paid even a little attention to her, she would know that. Would know that she’d been exclusively going by Poppy
since the fifth grade. That the only people who called her Penelope didn’t really know her at all.
Mom massaged the space between her brows. “Go tell everyone it’s time to eat.”
Arms hanging limply at her sides, Poppy stared across the kitchen. What exactly was the point of any of this? What had Mom
been hoping to achieve in bringing up what happened at the WMAs? There was no understanding achieved, no resolution, no catharsis.
It’s like she just wanted to knock Poppy down a peg, make her feel bad.
Suddenly she wasn’t hungry.
Mom turned her back on Poppy and reached inside the drawer nearest the stove, pulling out the carving knife. “Go, Penelope.”
Poppy stalked into the living room and stopped in the middle of the room, loudly clearing her throat. “It’s time to eat.”
Dillon, wedged between Dad and Uncle Mark on the couch, gestured to the TV. “But the game’s not—”
“Take it up with Mom.” She whirled on her heel and made a beeline for the dining room. The sooner they ate, the sooner they’d finish, the sooner she could leave.
As always, Mom had gone all out with the table decor, channeling her inner Martha Stewart, and making hand-lettered placards
for each place setting. Poppy circled the table, searching for her seat.
Mom breezed into the dining room and set the plated turkey down in the center of the table.
“Where am I sitting?” she asked.
Without looking at her, Mom jerked her chin toward the formal living room where the kids’ table was set up.
Poppy’s jaw dropped. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” she blurted, her outburst earning her horrified looks from everyone
around the dining table.
“Penelope,” Mom spoke through clenched teeth and Poppy would bet she was doing it on purpose, saying her name constantly, knowing now
that it got under her skin. “The table is only so large, even with the leaf out. There simply isn’t room.”
Poppy flung out a hand and gestured to her eldest niece, who was three years younger than her. “Maddie gets to sit in the
dining room.”
Maddie ducked her head and bit her lip, shrinking down in her seat.
Poppy swallowed hard past the growing lump in her throat and tore her eyes away from her niece, glaring at the person who
actually deserved her ire. Mom pursed her lips and stared back at her, a placid smile frozen on her face, the tension around
her mouth the only sign that Poppy had ruffled her feathers.
She was bitter and she knew she was being unreasonable and a bit of a brat, throwing a temper tantrum and probably confirming what the family already thought: that Poppy was unstable and erratic, prone to fits, hopeless and in need of hand-holding.
But she couldn’t help it. This was bullshit and if anyone in this room actually gave a fuck about her, they wouldn’t be afraid to say something.
A hush had fallen over the table, not a single person meeting her eyes as she looked around the room.