Read Online Rhymes With Cupid by Anna Humphrey - Free Book Online Page B

of our boxes. It was nice—if a little weird—to see all of our books lined up on the built-in shelves, our photos on the new mantelpiece. Even though the house was smaller than our last house—with hardwood floors that creaked and groaned, cracking plaster, and old-fashioned windows that let in a draft—it was starting to seem more like home.
    “Look at this,” my mom said, coming down the hallway. She was holding something curled in the palm of her hand. “I found it between the floorboards in the attic while I was putting the boxes away.” I set the towels I’d been folding on the linen closet shelf and went to see. It was a thin, tarnished chain with a tiny pendant on it. “I think it’s an opal,” my mom said, tipping the small, iridescent blue stone in the light. It was shaped like a heart. “Must have belonged to the old owners. But they didn’t leave a forwarding address. It’s yours now if you want it.” She opened my fingers and dropped the necklace into my hand. “There’s some silver polish under the sink.”
    I didn’t usually wear jewelry—especially cheesy heart-shaped stuff—but there was something kind of sweet and simple about the necklace that made me not hate it. I dropped it into my pocket, planning to clean it up later.
    My mom ducked into her bedroom and came out dragging the laundry hamper behind her. “I’m going to put in a load before I start painting the bathroom,” she said. “Do you have anything you want washed?”
    “No,” I said. “Not really.” My mom started off down the hallway with the heavy hamper, and that’s when I noticed the dust in her hair from the attic; the tired slump of her shoulders. We’d mostly been in separate rooms so I wasn’t certain, but I couldn’t remember seeing her stop all day to eat anything, or to sit down. And I was positive she hadn’t gotten around to showering yet.
    “Hey, Mom,” I said. “Why don’t you leave the bathroom? We can live with puke green for one more day.” It was hard to understand why anyone had picked that color for a bathroom in the first place. It made everyone who went in there look like they were just getting over the stomach flu. “We could rent a movie. Something brainless, like a romantic comedy. Make some popcorn. Take a break for tonight.”
    “ You want to rent a romantic comedy?” my mom asked, raising her eyebrows doubtfully. I didn’t want to, actually. I hated the whole “boy meets girl, they fall in love but—oh—they can’t possibly be together because of some terrible but really very easy-to-resolve misunderstanding” plots that always ended happily ever after with a passionate kiss and/or a wedding, but I knew they were my mom’s favorites so . . .
    “Yeah. I do,” I said.
    “Hang on.” She was grinning. “I’ll put this laundry in, run a brush through my hair, and grab the car keys. There’s a Video 411 at Carson Square.”
    Big mistake. An hour later, I was in sappy story heartbreak hell. “Oh, I can’t look,” my mom said, covering her eyes. “He’s going to see the other girl from behind, wearing the same sweater, and think it’s his fiancée. And they made such a cute couple, too. Didn’t you think it was romantic when he had the airplane skywrite his marriage proposal?”
    I thought it was kind of show-offy, actually, but my mom was obviously enjoying her movie, and I didn’t want to ruin it. I grabbed a handful of popcorn and shoved it into my mouth.
    “Yeah, romantic,” I said not too convincingly while I continued to chew.
    A buzzing sound came from the basement. “Oh, that’s the wash cycle finishing,” my mom said, hopping up. “Don’t pause it. I’ll be right back.” She came up the basement stairs five minutes later with the first load of clean laundry, which she folded while watching the female lead sob into a cappuccino with her best friend. Then, as soon as she finished that, my mother noticed that the mirror above the mantel was