“Oh, yes. Well…I know that this is your special day, and it’s about the two of you—the love you have for each other—but….” My mother hesitated, and her eyes caught mine. “But if you haven’t already found a place in Chicago and you don’t have your heart set on getting married there, I wonder if you would consider getting married in Boston.”

I masked my surprise by chasing a bite of mashed potatoes with a large gulp of beer.

“In Boston?” Janie asked; her tone made her surprise obvious.

“Yes. I’m sorry if I’ve overstepped. I was thinking about it after our last call. So I checked with the Irish Club and they’re holding the date for me, just in case. If you had the wedding here, we could have the entire family, and I could help with the planning.”

“It would mean a lot to your mother.” My father said this to me, though his eyes were on his plate.

“It’s not about me,” my mom said, a frown directed at my father. She shifted her attention back to Janie. “It’s about you and Quinn. It’s about starting your life together and celebrating with all your friends and family, who should be there to support you. And of course your family must be taken into consideration, so if Boston is too far then just forget I said anything.”

“To be honest, my family doesn’t need to be taken into consideration. I’m not saying this to be unfeeling; it’s really just the way things are.” Janie said this with no malice. In the past, she’d remarked that her family’s dysfunction was one of the laws of thermodynamics.

“What about your parents?”

“I’m sure my dad will come, if given enough notice and we reimburse his travel expenses, regardless of location. My younger sister is a sociopath, and I don’t know where she is. Quinn might know. But I don’t think we want her there…” Janie shook her head at the thought, and I suppressed a grimace at the mention of Jem.

Janie didn’t notice. “My older sister can’t come. The last I heard she skipped bail on a conviction for prostitution; she was running an escort service on the West Coast. Besides, June often turns what would typically be a normal event into an awkward and uncomfortable function. She came to my college graduation and tried to solicit my favorite professor. We don’t really keep in contact.”

“You and your sister, or you and your favorite professor?” My father asked.

“Neither. I’m afraid that bridge was burned when she cornered him in the men’s room.”

My mom stared at Janie for a long moment, absorbing this information, then asked, “What about your mother?”

“She’d dead.”

My mother’s eyes widened. I read both sympathy and shock on her expression. “I’m so sorry.”

Janie gave her a smile meant to ease her mind. “Thank you, but she wasn’t around very often when I was young. I have very few memories of her that don’t involve the botched preparation of vegan dinners.”

My mother’s gaze drifted to and searched mine. She appeared troubled. She also appeared determined.

“Speaking of dinners, these sausages are delicious.” Janie’s voice was a little higher pitched than usual, and I knew she was trying to change the subject. Discussions of her family—really, the aftermath of discussions and people’s reactions—always made her agitated.

“My partner gave them to me. You remember Tom?” My father asked me, spooning more mashed potatoes on his plate. “He goes moose hunting in Canada every year, always brings back sausages.”

“M-moose?” Janie asked.

Something about the tone of her voice caught my attention, and I glanced at her, did a double take as she’d suddenly become pale.

“Yep. Moose.”

Janie set down her fork, one hand going to her stomach, the other to the water glass, shaking.

I frowned at her, tried to catch her eye, especially since she was now turning green.

My mom also noticed, because she asked, “Are you okay, Dear?”

“Deer too?” Janie’s eyes grew wide and she’d firmed her chin. “Deer and moose? Any other woodland animals included in the sausage? Beavers maybe?”

“No,” my mother said, “just moose. I was calling you Dear. There are no deer in the sausage.”

“Oh….” Janie blinked. I could see her throat working; she was struggling to swallow.

“What’s wrong?” My concern was escalating to alarm. I’d never seen her this way before. She looked like she was going to be sick.

“It’s just….” She lifted her eyes to mine, and I saw she was panicked. She covered her mouth and shook her head.

“Janie,” I started to stand but she lifted her hand, staying my movements, keeping me in my seat. “Janie, what is wrong?”

She shook her head again, closing her eyes. “I don’t want to say.” Her words were muffled because her hand was still in front of her mouth.

My mother looked at me imploringly.

“Say it,” I said. My heart rate spiked, and I was pulling out my phone. I didn’t know who I was going to call—maybe Elizabeth. She was a doctor and Janie’s best friend. She’d be able to tell me if I should call an ambulance. Maybe she could talk her through this crisis.

“It’s just….” Janie buried her face in her hands, her elbows hitting the table. “It’s just that moose carry a strain of mad cow disease, but it’s not mad cow disease, it’s mad moose disease.”

“Mad moose disease?” my father asked, his fork halfway to his mouth with a piece of moose sausage speared on it. He glanced between Janie and the bite of moose meat.

“The moose go mad, break off their antlers, just crazy moose running around in the forest. They can weigh seven hundred pounds or more, so you can imagine the devastation. And there is no cure—not for the moose. And if you eat moose meat, you can get it—assuming the moose you eat has the disease—and you won’t know because it doesn’t present for ten years, or thereabouts, after you’ve consumed the moose meat. So we could all be infected and our brains could melt and we could all go mad…in about ten years.”

The end of her tirade was punctuated by deafening silence. Then, the silence was followed by a muffled burst of laughter from my mother. I looked at my mom, found her trying to contain her giggles with a napkin covering the bottom half of her face. But her eyes shone with mirth, and try as she might, she couldn’t stop laughing.

I looked to my father and found his shoulders shaking. He was doing a better job of hiding his amusement, fighting harder against it, because his eyes were closed and his hand was clamped over his mouth.

Even I was grinning and shaking my head.

Janie was peeking at us from between her fingers. Her face and neck were every shade of red, but a weary smile tugged at one side of her mouth as her eyes moved between my parents. Her hands fell away.

“So I guess….” She shrugged her shoulders, looked pained but also reluctantly pleased with herself, and took a deep breath. “We should just make the best of the time we still have left!”

CHAPTER 16

*Janie*

Quinn and his father did the dishes.

As soon as dinner was over, Quinn stood, began collecting the dishes, and left the dining room with his father as if it was imprinted in his genetic code. I watched them come in and out, these two giant men, clearing the serving plates in silence while Katherine spoke to me about one of her favorite students.

I debated whether to stand, made up my mind to do so, but Quinn shook his head when I pushed my chair back and indicated through our developing means of silent communication that I should stay and chat with his mom.

When the last of the items was taken, I turned to her, leaned close, and whispered, “Does Desmond always do the dishes?”

She glanced at the doorway to the kitchen and nodded. “Yes, if I make dinner then he does the dishes. If he makes dinner then I do the dishes. It’s how we’ve always done it. It’s also nice because, since it’s tradition, we both know what’s expected of us, which leads to fewer dirty dishes and less nagging.”

“Oh.” I started to stand.

“Where are you going?”

“To help with the dishes.”

“No, no. Stay with me, you helped with dinner and, if you don’t mind, I appreciate your company.” Her smile was warm, affectionate and therefore felt maternal, which made me a little uncomfortable. But Katherine reached for my hand, squeezed it. “You know, you remind me of Shelly a little.”

“I do?” I grinned at the thought. Other than being tall, awkward, and loving Quinn, I didn’t think we had much in common.

“Yes. It’s the curiosity, I think. She was the most curious kid I’ve ever met, always taking things apart, wanting to know how they worked, putting them back together—but never in the way they were before. Always in a new way.”

“I am curious. It’s true. That’s a fact.”

“And also the goodness. She felt everything so deeply as a child and as a teenager. We once found a dog running around the neighborhood with three legs. She was only eleven, but she fashioned a prosthetic limb for the animal out of wood and old car parts Desmond had laying around. It rolled, had a wheel, so the dog could run with the others.”