Clarity

JACOB

"I have some good news for you. We're coming home for the holidays!" My mom said to me cheerfully over the phone. I froze, and my guts turned to ice. I turned to look at Rebecca, my eyes widened in horror.

"What happened?" She silently mouthed at me, but I couldn't answer, not when there was a chance my mom might notice something was off and start interrogating me about it. Instead I replied, "That's great! When are you going to arrive? How long are you going to stay?" It was just what my mom wanted to hear, and she dove directly into a lengthy story of all the trouble she and dad went through to get time off from their jobs and reserve the tickets and how expensive the tickets were and what her friends and coworkers had to say about it and what our relatives were doing and so on and so forth in a seemingly endless torrent of speech.