Martha Stewart award right now.” She turned back to her mother. “Can you, like, go now?” I glanced uneasily from Holly to her mother. If I ever spoke to my mother that way, especially in front of a guest, she would probably pinch my arm and lecture me about who the mother was. Instead Holly’s mother reached for a bottle of hand lotion inside a coffee-colored wicker basket—of which there were half a dozen on that floor alone—and squirted some onto her hands. Cloves. That was it. The smell was dope.
