“Ezekiel Chase, you stop right there.”
He took his hands out of his pockets.
Denise stepped in front of him. For a second, her face cracked—not with anger, but with that raw, panicked love of someone who’d been handed a teenager she didn’t earn but desperately wanted to keep. momswap brooklyn chase
He flinched. Ezekiel. She only used that when she meant business. Except… she wasn’t his mother. Not really. Three weeks ago, some cosmic hiccup swapped every mom in Brooklyn. Chase had come home to find a woman named Denise in his kitchen, stirring gumbo, wearing his real mom’s apron. And his real mom? Last he heard, she was on Staten Island, teaching some kid named Marcus how to fold fitted sheets. “Ezekiel Chase, you stop right there
Denise’s heels clicked down the stoop. She was a litigation attorney from Crown Heights—sharp, loud, and terrified of vulnerability. “You ran out on dinner. Again.” He flinched
“Because you keep asking me about my feelings. My real mom just asks if I want more meatloaf.”
Chase looked past her, down Vanderbilt Avenue, where the B65 bus was coughing toward Atlantic. He could make it. He could find his real mom’s brownstone, camp out on the steps, and wait for the swap to reverse.