“Harper…” her grandmother growled.
“When I was forced to endure a revolving door of your boyfriends all through my childhood.”
“Harper, that’s enough,” the man with Susie said and right when we stepped forward to defend our mate, Harper whirled to confront him.
“You don’t get a say in this, Peter.” Right, his name was Peter. Introductions had been overlooked in the kerfuffle. “I’m glad Mum found you, that you’ve had a really solid relationship for lets face it, the longest period in her life.”
“You never let anything go.” Susie was on the verge of tears, I could hear them in her voice and that left me standing there, wondering what the fuck to do. “Always living in the past, bringing up my mistakes.”
“Because you let mine go and never bring up how I screwed up,” Harper shot back.
“I just want to stop you from making the same mistakes I did.” Susie peered past her daughter at us. “Or ones I’d never have even considered making.”
“That’s not how it works, Mum.” OK, now Harper was getting seriously upset. The impulse to freeze until all this was over was shoved to one side. When I moved closer, so did the rest of the pack. We clustered around Harper, our hands going to her shoulders, her back, my fingers interlinking with hers and squeezing. “You don’t get to hold me to higher standard than you did yourself and still have a relationship with me.”
That shake of Harper’s head. Were all families toxic? Could we never stop hurting the people we care about?
“I’m getting you out of here,” I told Harper in a low voice, but the others caught every word.
“Let’s all just sit down—” Agnes said, but Susie stepped forward.
“You’re not going anywhere with my daughter!”
“And who’s gonna stop me?” Harper snapped. “Peter? I’m nearly thirty. Long past needing a stepfather.”
“Harper! Susan!” Agnes snapped and for a moment I thought she’d managed to establish a truce. Silence reigned for just a moment, broken by a knock on the door.
“Who the hell would that be?” Agnes asked with a frown.
“Ahh…” That was Tor making that sound and looking around the room awkwardly. “It might be my family.”
“What?”
Now all three women were speaking at the same time.
“Oh, this is getting good.”
Sally threw a peanut up in the air and caught it in her mouth, crunching it with glee.
“What the hell did you do?” I hissed at Tor.
“Mum and my grandma were hassling me about having everyone over.” His words came out in a great rush. “They wanted us at the restaurant for lunch. I told them I couldn’t, because we were going around to meet Harper’s grandmother?—”
“And they decided to invite themselves over,” Kieran finished, trying to smother a smile and failing.
“Your family is at the front door?” Agnes asked, staring at Tor.
“Um…” He consulted with his phone. “Yeah. They may or may not have brought some food as well.”
“Somefood…” Kieran coughed, trying to hide his smirk.
“Well, it’s usual practise to discuss inviting guests with the host, but if they’re waiting at the front door, it would be rude not to invite them in.” Agnes shot both her daughter and granddaughter a hard look. “I trust you two can put a pin in this.”
The woman didn’t wait for an answer, bustling up to the front door.
“Hi,” Anya said with a little wave. “I apologise for barging in like this. I’m Tor’s mother. We’ve been trying to catch up with the lot of them since the incident yesterday. Do you mind if we join you? We brought food.”
“Man, do we have a lot of food,” Dina muttered, hoisting a pile of plastic boxes higher in her arms.
