I’d almost forgotten about The Husband—which is what I’d silently dubbed Grant, since it made me physically ill to even think his name—but he was the one I stumbled into in the kitchen. He was already dressed in a suit and on his way out the door, thank God, because, like I’d mentioned, that whole stomach-wrenching, physically ill thing.
I checked the clock over the microwave—it was 7:42.
The Husband poked his head back inside a minute later—I knew because my eyes automatically flicked to check. “You might want to see this.”
I was still in my mom’s clothes from the night before, and I grudgingly trailed after him, keeping enough distance so he didn’t get the wrong impression or anything. No matter what he had to show me, there was no way this was a truce.
I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw what it was he’d come back in to share with me. And then I smiled, because how could I not?
The illustrations were detailed and elaborate. And even though they were created with chalk, they were vibrant and lifelike.
Tyler had drawn a cobblestone pathway that stretched all the way from one side of our street to the other, bridging our two houses, practically from my front door to his. And running across the top of the pathway was a saying, written in beautiful, scrawling script. It said:
I’ll remember you always.
It took my breath away. I couldn’t believe he’d gone to all this trouble for me. He must’ve stayed up half the night to finish it.
I glanced over to his house, but he was probably already at school.
The Husband made a whistling sound. “Pretty impressive.”
I’d almost forgotten he was there, and I wiped the smile from my face, not wanting him to get the tiniest glimpse into what I might be thinking, and then I stalked back inside. Once I’d locked the door and leaned against it and was sure The Husband could no longer see me, the grin slipped back to my lips.
My mom was at the coffeemaker, pouring herself a cup just as my dad shuffled into the kitchen.
“Yes, please,” he told her, nodding at the pot in her hand as he sat down at the table, taking the same spot he’d always sat in when we’d all lived there together.
She rolled her eyes at him but reached for another mug anyway. She didn’t ask if he wanted cream or sugar, even though he always did; she just handed his coffee to him black.
He grumbled, but he got up and went to the fridge. After a minute he peered around the door at my mom. “Don’t you have anything that isn’t soy? Something that comes from, oh, I don’t know, a cow? I’ll even take goat.”
“Sorry.” She shrugged, not at all apologetically, plucking the carton of soy milk from his hands and settling down at the table.
I sat down, too, taking my old seat. The familiarity of it should have been comfortable, but it so wasn’t. My dad sitting across from me, my mom between us, like we were still a family.
But we weren’t.
“Pretty cool, what that Tyler kid did,” my dad said, breaking the tense silence.
I cringed. “You . . . saw that?”
“Saw him do it. Right after you snuck back in.” He raised his bushy eyebrows at me, folding his arms across the belly he’d never had before.
“You snuck out?” my mom demanded, glowering at me and then turning her glare on my dad, probably for not cluing her in sooner. “How could you . . . do you have any idea . . .” She stammered, unable to come up with the right argument. And then seemed to deflate all at once. “Kyra, you can’t do that. We . . . just got you back.”
And that was it. That was the right one, and even though I was technically an adult, her words were like a knife through my heart.
“Sorry,” my sixteen-year-old self mumbled, feeling properly scolded.
“She was fine.” My dad assured, reaching over and patting my hand, maybe because he couldn’t pat hers anymore. “They went to the park and came right back. They were gone less than half an hour.”
My eyes widened. “You knew? The whole time?”
He lifted his still-black coffee to his lips, and his mouth turned downward evasively. “I might’a followed you, might’a didn’t.” He winked then, and I shook my head, thinking of the way I’d heard something in the trees. Had he seriously been spying on us?
“That’s weird. You’re weird.” But it felt better, joking with him like that, like nothing had changed. Well, not as much at least.
My mom cut in. “I think we should get you some clothes today.” She eyed my outfit skeptically, and I was tempted to remind her it was hers. “And maybe a new cell phone.”
A loud wail erupted from down the hall, and I felt myself blanch as she jumped up from the table. I’d practically erased the kid from my memory, almost as effectively as I’d forgotten the past five years. If only.
With my mom gone, my dad leaned in, and I could smell his breath. I wondered if he wasn’t still a little drunk from the day before. “I’m not much of a shopper. I think I’ll leave you all to it. I should probably get home and see how Nancy’s holding up.”
Nancy. I let this new name sink in, even as my world tilted sideways once more. Suddenly there was a Nancy too. What was that all about? Now I had two new parents to deal with?
I no longer had a bedroom, or parents who could stand each other, or even a real home of my own.
My vision blurred, and when I couldn’t stand to look at him for another second, I let my eyes slip to the digital clock on the microwave. It was 8:31.
After a moment he got up from the table, his chair scraping along the tile floor. He kissed me on the top my head, his beard catching strands of my hair as he did. “I’ll come back later, kiddo. We can talk more then.” My mom came back into the kitchen carrying her new kid, and my dad smiled, but it never really reached his eyes. “Maybe I’ll even bring Nancy so you can meet her.”
Shopping with my mom and the new kid was less like shopping and more like wrangling an errant steer. The kid had to be herded and restrained at every turn. But I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want to hear my mom call him “my brother” again.
She kept saying that. “Your brother holds a spoon just fine, Kyra. He’s only two.” “Can you hold your brother’s hand while we cross the street?” “Your brother has a name; it’s Logan.”
It was as though, if she said it enough, she’d somehow force some nonexistent bond between us. Make me feel something for him.
Fine, whatever. He might be my brother by blood, but that didn’t change the fact that he was a virtual stranger.
Worse, he was the brat who’d stolen my mom.
By the time we reached Target, which was only our second stop after the cell phone store, my mom managed to secure the mangy little beast into a shopping cart with a strap that was surely meant to contain monkeys. She got him to shut up for five whole minutes with a bag of popcorn that he threw around like it was confetti and the New Year’s Eve ball was dropping in Times Square. He was the most embarrassing thing ever, and I couldn’t believe she thought I’d ever lay claim to him.
He didn’t start screaming until he realized he couldn’t wiggle out of the shoulder harness he was strapped into.
After about fifteen minutes of that I covered my ears. “Forget it.” I glanced at what was in the cart: a couple of T-shirts and one pair of jeans I’d already picked out. “I don’t wanna do this anymore.” I glanced meaningfully at the kid writhing in the seat and held out my hand for the keys. “I’m going to the car. Pay for this stuff, or don’t. I could care less.”