Love You Like a Sister by Robin Palmer

Author:Robin Palmer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aladdin

Eight

One of the things I loved most about my mom was how friendly she was. While she might not have been like Lexi’s mom with stray animals, she was definitely a fan of stray people. (“There’s no such thing as strangers, Avery. Only new friends you haven’t met yet.”) On Thanksgiving and Christmas our house was filled with people who weren’t spending it with their families. Mom loved to entertain, and even though she couldn’t cook, she was great at picking out foods at Trader Joe’s. I didn’t know if other kids had things like baba ghanoush and baked ziti and cucumber soup for Thanksgiving, but I did.

“I was thinking it’s been a while since we had people over for dinner,” she said a few mornings later after I came downstairs for breakfast. She was at the table with the coffee mug I had given her for Mother’s Day that year—the one that said “One Sip at a Time.” I knew she had to be on her second cup because she never started conversations before then.

“That would be fun,” I said as I reached for the loaf of raisin bread we had gotten at the farmers’ market a few days before. I loved raisin bread. Especially this one because it was so cinnamony and gooey that you didn’t even have to put any butter on it, but I always put apple butter on it anyway. That way I could say I had had two servings of fruit for breakfast. “Who are you going to invite? Rachel and Ibrahim?” Rachel was also a professor and a good friend of Mom’s. Her boyfriend was this guy named Ibrahim, who was originally from Egypt but had grown up mostly in Paris, so he had a French accent.

“No. I was thinking . . . some new people,” she said as she tore off a piece of my bread when I joined her at the table.

“That couple you met at the food co-op during your shift last week?” I asked. “The ones who just moved here from Vermont?” If you were a member of the co-op, you could volunteer to work there and get discounts. I think Mom did it more because she liked talking to people than because she wanted to save money.

“Nope. But I would like to have them over at some point,” she said. “I was thinking . . . your dad and Lana and the girls.”

I stopped midbite. “For real?”

“Yes, for real,” she said. “You’re about to drip apple butter all over you.”

I gulped down the toast so that wouldn’t happen. I was wearing my favorite T-shirt—one of Mom’s that she had gotten at a Billy Idol concert in the eighties—and it had been washed so many times that I was afraid it would fall apart the next time it came out of the dryer. “But . . . why?” I asked after my mouth was no longer full.

“Why?” she repeated. “It’s more like ‘Why not?’ They’re your new family, and I’d like to get to know them better.

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