My Favorite Mistake by Georgina Bloomberg, Catherine Hapka Read Free Book Online Page A

with anxiety. Ever since her mom had gotten laid off from her part-time receptionist job when Kate was nine, any change of that sort made her anxious. But she tried not to dwell. It wasn’t like she could do anything about it.
    Besides, she was way too tired to worry about it right now. It had been a busy day at the barn as always, plus she’d stayed extra late helping pack up. They were leaving for the show the next day, and there never seemed to be enough time to get everything done.
    The only light in the house was coming from the kitchen at the back. Kate headed that way, a little nervous about what she might find.
    When she entered, her mother was standing at the sink scrubbing at a crusty saucepan. Kate felt her shoulders relax. Okay, so maybe most people didn’t do the dishes at 1:00 a.m. But for Kate’s mother, that almost passed as normal.
    â€œHi, Mom,” Kate said, dropping her bag and sinking down onto one of the stools in front the battered butcher-block kitchen island.
    â€œKatie! You’re home.” Her mother turned and smiled, her thin face tired but alert. “I was just starting to worry.”
    â€œYou know you can call me whenever,” Kate reminded her. “I always keep my phone on.”
    â€œI know. But I don’t like to bother you.” Her mother set down the pan and peeled off her rubber gloves. “Are you hungry? I can make you a plate. There’s leftovers from dinner—we had that roast chicken your father likes so much.”
    â€œThanks. That sounds great.” As her mother hurried over to the refrigerator, Kate’s mind drifted back to Pelham Lane and everything she had to do the next day. She loved shows, but sometimes she hated them, too. She especially hated hearing some of the other juniors complain about how it was
so
stressful having to show their hunters and then rush to warmup their eq horses, with barely enough time to have lunch and gossip with their friends in between. What did they know about stress?
    She snapped out of it when her mother set a plate in front of her. “There you go, Katie,” she said, already bustling back over to the fridge. “Just let me grab you some juice.”
    Kate’s heart sank as she looked at the plate. Anyone else might not have noticed anything off about it. It was just a plate of chicken, carrots, and new potatoes.
    No, the food itself wasn’t the strange part. It was the way her mother had arranged it on the plate. Carefully, with none of the different foods touching each other. Exactly four pieces of chicken cut into the same size strips. Four chunks of carrot. Four potatoes.
    In other words, business as usual. Kate had never even heard of OCD when her mother had started her rituals a few years earlier. All she’d known was that Mom had some funny habits, and it made Dad tense. Now, they were all so used to it that Kate sometimes wondered how much her father and younger brother even noticed anymore.
    But
she
noticed. And it was getting harder and harder to take.
    â€œThere you are, sweetie.” Her mother set a glass of juice beside the plate. Then she grabbed a rag and wiped off the countertop nearby. One circle, two, three, four.
    Kate’s fist clenched around her fork; she was too tired and stressed to deal with this right now. She wanted to rebel against her mother’s cheery facade, let her know she knew what was going on, even if the only way she could think of to do itwas to shove the piles of food into each other to see how her mother would react. She actually lifted the fork to do it.
    But her hand froze in midair, the fork poised half an inch above the carrots. She couldn’t follow through on the plan. It felt physically impossible.
    â€œJust leave your dishes in the sink please, Katie,” her mother said, completely unaware of Kate’s struggle. “See you in the morning.”
    â€œUh-huh.” Kate didn’t take her eyes off the