Chapter 71

“What’s funny?”

“I made my cousin tell her mom what was going on with her, but my mom doesn’t know jack about me.”

“No, I don’t believe that,” Jo said. “She knows about your cooking, right? And she has to know what a good guy you are. If you tell her you’re…” She still wasn’t comfortable saying the word. “If you tell her that, you know, that guy from the college broke your heart, isn’t she just going to think about what she can do to help?”

“You don’t know my mom.”

“I can see how she is from the way you talk about her, though.”

“So what about you? What should you be telling your mom?”

Jo whistled and shook her head. She prodded at a jalape?o that hadn’t made it into her soup. “No, there are a lot of things my mom doesn’t need to know. I’d be grounded for, like, the rest of my life. I really don’tthink she’d understand.”

“My turn to ask you a question,” Terrell said.

“Only fair.”