Read In the Worst Way (Mercy Watts Mysteries Book 5) for Free Online

with these bags?”  
    “Hell, no. I’m not taking the blame for that.”  
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
    “You will.” He put the highball glass to my lips. “Drink. You’ll need it.”  
    I took the smallest of sips. It was nasty, but I smiled and choked back a cough for Dad’s benefit. He swore that when I was a real adult I’d appreciate whiskey. Not going to happen. Burning throat liquid wasn’t for me.
    “Tommy, is that you?” Mom’s voice came right through the kitchen door along with the faint smell of her beloved ragu bolognese. It took four hours to make and contained, to my dismay, chicken livers.  
    Dad raised his glass to me and said, “No. It’s a crazy sick maniac, drinking all your handsome husband’s good whiskey.”
    “My husband is just okay. You can drink his whiskey.”
    “What?”  
    Mom laughed in the kitchen, but Dad couldn’t stop frowning.  
    “Don’t come in. My boyfriend’s still here,” she said.  
    Dad began some serious muttering.  
    I nudged Dad out of the way. “Hello. She’s joking.”
    “It could happen,” said Dad.
      I rolled my eyes at him and turned the old brass doorknob. It couldn’t happen. Not that Mom couldn’t get a boyfriend. She could get twelve plus two. But she wouldn’t. For some reason, she was devoted to my father, a six foot four redhead that wouldn’t eat for days, if she didn’t watch him. Seriously, my father had a feeding schedule. He was that skinny.  
    I opened the door and the bolognese smell rolled in like a thick fog and enveloped me so completely that I was light-headed for a blissful moment. It smelled like we were Italian, which we weren’t.  
    Mom twirled around, holding a wide wooden spoon and wearing one of Dad’s white dress shirts that came to her knees and a pair of black leggings. Even though she’d been cooking for hours, her hair was perfectly done and never looked more like Marilyn Monroe, cat eye makeup and all. My mother never looked bad. I, on the other hand, had no makeup, dog slobber on my jeans, and spider webs in my hair. Sometimes people confused me for Marilyn, but nobody ever mistook me for my mother.  
    I hauled my bags to the kitchen table and heaved them on. Vegetables were heavier than they looked. “Hi, Mom. Sauce smells great.”  
    “What do you expect me to do with all that lettuce?” She jabbed the air with her spoon. “Don’t even bring those in here.”  
    “What am I supposed to do with them? Leave them on the porch to rot? This cost good money.” There! I was using my mother’s own words against her. Did she ever hate wasting good money.  
    “How many heads of lettuce did you buy?” she asked.  
    “A few.”
    “Define a few.”  
    “I don’t know,” I said.  
    “You don’t want to tell me,” she said.
    Correct.
    “I’d tell you if I knew.”  
    I did know. I had twenty-two heads of lettuce in my bags. In retrospect, it was a lot of lettuce. At the time, it seemed like a snack portion.  
    Mom stalked over and whacked my bags with her spoon in rhythm with her words. “This. Has. Gone. Too. Far.”  
    “It’s just lettuce, Mom,” I said, trying to hide the radishes, cucumbers, kale, and carrots. “You love salads. You eat salads all the time.”  
    “How much weight have you lost?” she asked.  
    I groaned. “Do we have to talk about this again?”  
    “How much?”  
    “A little.”  
    “I’d say it’s closer to twenty-five pounds,” said Mom.
    Holy crap! Right on the money.
    “It’s not that much.”  
    “You’re starving yourself.”  
    “I am not. I eat.”  
    “You eat nothing.” Mom picked up a bag of arugula and threw it at Dad. “I told you to talk some sense into her.”  
    Dad held the bag up like a shield. “We had a situation.”  
    “We have a situation right here. Look at her. She looks like a scarecrow.” Mom plucked at the waist of my jeans. It was bunched up under the belt.