Free Fed Up by Jessica Conant-Park, Susan Conant Page A

going to be at Simmer tonight to cook me the dinner he’d promised, he’d be working a brutally long day. I brewed a pot of coffee and called my mother to let her know I wasn’t coming to work today. I didn’t feel ready to tell my parents about Josh’s nightmare of a TV episode yesterday, so I simply said that I had a cold. In fact, I sounded so raspy that it took almost no effort to make myself sound sick.
    “Chloe, you poor thing. Aren’t those summer colds the worst?” My mother was so full of sympathy that I felt a pang of guilt about my lie. “Why don’t I stop by later with some tissues and soup? Or, better yet, why don’t you come and stay with us for a few days, and we’ll take care of you?”
    I was touched by my mother’s offer to nurse me back to health, but even if I’d been sick, I’d have refused. I loved my parents to pieces, but it would have been impossible to get any real rest with my mother popping into the guest bedroom every five minutes to take my temperature and feed me hot broth. I’d have had to return home to recover from recovering.
    “No, thanks, Mom. I’m really fine. It’s just a cold. I should be much better tomorrow.”
    “Well, don’t worry about tomorrow, either. I think it’ll be a slow day around here. I’ll call you if we need you. While I have you on the phone, are things looking all set for Adrianna’s shower on Saturday?”
    “I think so. I’ve heard back from almost everyone.”
    I couldn’t believe that it was only four more days until my best friend’s combination wedding shower and baby shower. Both the shower and wedding itself were going to be held at my parents’ house. I’d been determined to host Adrianna’s shower myself, but it would’ve been impossible to squeeze more than a few people into my little condo. And the wedding? Owen, who was working as a fish purveyor, was living off the commissions he made from selling seafood to restaurants, and Adrianna had just stopped working as an independent hair stylist. Consequently, the two parents-to-be were barely able to pay their bills. Owen’s parents simply didn’t have the money to help them, and Adrianna’s mother, Kitty, had suggested that they go to City Hall for a quick service. Kitty was less than thrilled about the order in which her daughter was getting married and starting a family. Adrianna’s father had vanished when she was very young, and she had no grandparents or other family members with the money or the desire to help finance her wedding.
    So, a few months earlier, when it had become clear that Owen and Ade were stuck, I’d secretly approached my parents, who not only had offered to host both events at their house but were paying for practically everything. One reason for their generosity was that they knew and liked Owen and Ade. Another was that they understood how important my friends and their unborn baby were to me. A third was what felt like moral outrage at Adrianna’s mother’s nasty, stingy attitude. “We can afford to do it,” my father had assured me, “and so we will! The wedding will be beautiful. And,” he’d added, “if Adrianna’s mother doesn’t like it, she can sit in the back row and glower.”
    Once the plan was in place, I invited the bride and groom to dinner at my parents’ house in Newton, where my mom and dad surprised Adrianna and Owen with their offer. Ade and Owen were completely overwhelmed at my parents’ generosity, and each had thanked my parents so frequently and profusely that my dad eventually started joking about rescinding the offer if the two wouldn’t shut up. Fortunately for my parents’ bank balance, Adrianna and Owen wanted a fairly small, simple wedding rather than one of those over-the-top affairs with a full band, a bridal party of twenty, an expensive photographer, and an exorbitantly priced reception hall. My friends would never have asked my parents to pay for a gigantic, pricey wedding, which wouldn’t have been