Chapter 18

Mom could have taken around twenty minutes to come home. It could have been longer. The moment she came through the door and she saw Chanel and I on the sofa, she ran to me.

"Adele, what's wrong? You sounded weird on the phone and then Liam's acting strange too."

I didn't want to tell her or dramatize the situation, but I'd been repeating how this whole thing was going to go. The moment she walked through the door and into my arms, I lost courage to do it. Literally.

I'd been visualizing how the talk was going to go and every single time that I replayed it in my head, it ended up badly. That was when I noticed it, as she cupped my face with her hand.

A ring.

An engagement ring.

I took her fingers from my face, as the rough edg-es stroked it.

"Mom is this what I think it is?"

She nodded, but then hesitated as she said, "Yes, Henry proposed last night. He cooked dinner and I had no idea."

"But you haven't even been going out that long. How could you?"