My Dying Mother Wanted to See Me Engaged Before Christmas. So I Asked My Best Friend’s Sister to Pretend

My mother cried for an hour. She hugged Nora so hard that Nora started crying too.

Then she started planning.

Over the next two months, Nora drove out to the farm three times a week after closing the bookshop. She sat with my mother by the fire. She read to her. They looked at wedding dresses in old magazines. They argued about whether the reception should be in the orchard or the barn.

I came up every weekend.

And something started happening that I hadn’t planned at all.

I started looking forward to Saturdays more than I’d looked forward to anything in years. I started noticing the way Nora laughed with her whole face. The way she knew exactly what my mother needed before my mother asked. The way she argued with me about books at dinner like I was just Theo, not a number in a magazine.

One night in January, after my mother fell asleep, Nora and I sat by the fire with the last of the cider.

“Your mother asked me something today,” Nora said.

“What?”

“She asked me if I love you.”

I put down my glass.

“What did you tell her?”

Nora looked into the fire for a long time.

“I told her the truth,” she said.