The Right One

Thirty six

Hope had practically had her ear to the ground the past hour, waiting to hear the sound of the gate opening, indicating Raymond's arrival. She was out the door and opening the door on Raymond's side of the car even before the car was properly parked.

"Why haven't you been answering your phone?!"

Raymond blinked, looking confused as to why Hope looked like she was about to combust. He hesitated a bit, contemplating whether getting out of the car was the best course of action. He eventually did, carefully picking his words to avoid Hope going off on a tirade on him. "I didn't know it was ringing, sorry. Good afternoon to you too, Hope."

"I bet you wouldn't find the afternoon so good when you hear about the latest development."

The urgency in her tone had Raymond and Alex sharing a quick look. Even Angel seemed curious as to what was going on. The three of them stood there, waiting for her to elaborate.

When it became obvious she wasn't going to, Raymond prompted, "Okay . . . What's this about? Did anything happen? Is your mum alright?"

"What--" It took Hope a minute to realize he thought something must have happened at the nursing home. "No, it has nothing to do with my mum -- no actually it does, but it's not that." She took a deep breath to calm her rambling. " She knows."

Her response only fed his confusion further. "Your mum? Knows about what?"

Frustrated, Hope exclaimed. "About us! She knows about us!"

"Oh." It took a moment but she could clearly see when the implications of her words dawned on him. "Oh."

"Yeah, exactly. Now, she wants to see have a talk with the both of us," Hope rambled on. "You'd at least have gotten a heads up if you'd picked your call."

"We'll be inside, you guys," Alex announced, bringing Hope's attention back to the fact that they were still standing there. Angel was staring between her and Raymond with a look that bordered between confused and amused, but Hope was too occupied to pay much attention to that. She barely even noticed Alex grabbing ahold of a reluctant Angel, ushering the girl in against her will.

"So? What are we going to do?"

"Go in and hear what she has to say. It's been a long time coming anyway," Raymond replied. It wasn't as if they had any other option.

Hope wasn't sure what she'd expected, but it certainly wasn't for Raymond to still be so composed when she felt like she was about losing her mind.

"Really. Aren't you even a bit worried about this?"

"Of course I am, but we'd already prepared for this, remember?" Raymond replied. "Before the unexpected events of the past week consumed everyone's minds, we were going to tell her."

While he was right, that felt like way too long ago to Hope. She might have been prepared then, but she definitely wasn't prepared anymore. "Ugh. How I wish we'd told her then. At least it'd have been over by now. Is there a way we could go back and rewind things just a little bit? I promise I'll make better life choices this time around --" She turned to see that he was smiling amusedly despite her panicked rambling. "Of course you're smiling. I'm a nervous wreck right now, and you still have the ability to smile. Life's so unfair."

"Well, you're freaking out enough for the both of us. Besides . . . " He started, grabbing hold of her hand. "It's just your mum. We'll be fine. Speaking of your mum, we should go in before she starts getting more pissed off than she probably is already."

"What if she says no? You're not going to break up with me, are you?" Hope asked, finally voicing out her real cause of concern. Her intense glare dared him to say something stupid.