Chapter 3 #2
Not so much as a glance. Adjusting the bags to one hand, I pulled out my phone, accessed our internet app and changed the password, signing everyone out while I was at it. Then I counted backwards in my head: three, two, one…
“Hey, what happened to our internet?” Wyatt yelled, still not looking around.
I moved to stand between him and the TV and waved at him. “Hi. Remember me?”
Wyatt pulled his headphones off one ear to say, “Internet’s out.”
“Internet’s out!” Pika-boo repeated.
I snorted but kept my eyes on my brother. “Don’t you mean ‘hi, sis, great to see you, how was your very long day?’”
He sighed. “Hi, sis, great to see you, why is our internet out?”
“Oh, it’s not. I just changed the password.”
He gaped at me. “Seriously?”
I gave him a smug smile. “Maybe I just wanted to remind you that I’m still your big, and therefore annoying, sister.”
His eyebrows bunched together. “Mission accomplished,” he muttered.
“Homework?”
“Did it in class,” he said. “New password?”
I raised a brow.
Wyatt sighed dramatically. “ Please? ”
“Aw, look at that—you can remember the magic word.” I ruffled his hair. “Pretty fly for Wi-Fi, no spaces.”
“Pretty fly for Wi-Fi, no spaces,” Pika-boo sang.
Wyatt just rolled his eyes. He was a smart-ass but also smart as hell. I knew he got bored in school, but there were definitely worse things he could be doing in class than his homework.
“You eat your lunch today?”
This got a vague almost-shrug from scrawny shoulders that were slightly hunched.
This too skinny, surly, sullen teen who I loved with all my heart had faced way too much heartbreak in his short life.
I wanted to see him happy. See him smile like he used to, because his smiles, when he chose to bestow them, could light up a room and make my deeply buried heart sing.
Unable to help myself, I leaned in and pressed a kiss to the top of his head. “Love you.”
“ Love you, love you, love you ,” Pika-boo sang.
Wyatt gave a great suffering sigh.
“To the moon and back,” I added.
“Ew.” But there was the teeniest tinge of affection in his voice.
I’d take it. I wanted to hug him, but I’d already pushed my luck. Instead, I headed into the kitchen to find Grandma attempting to fix the dishwasher, even though I’d begged her not to. I opened my mouth to ask her to please stop, and?—
The dishwasher door fell off.
“Huh,” she said. “Who saw that coming?”
I raised my hand. “Me, myself, and I! And stop tinkering. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“Hey, I’m tougher than I look. And I think we need a renovation.”
Truth. “Just waiting on Santa to come through with a bucket of gold.” I got a good look at her. Her pink t-shirt read: Stand Aside Boys, The Experts Are Here. “That’s new.”
“Hope you like it.” Grandma grinned. “’Cause yours is in the mudroom, along with your tool belt.” She patted hers—pink leather—and it nearly slipped off her skinny hips. “I’ve been watching YouTube videos. We’ve got this.”
Oh boy. I set the bags of food on the table, not even trying to argue. Somewhere in her sixties, Grandma had decided life was too short to waste a single second and had turned into a teenager.
Who was I to judge? I gestured to the bags. “Dinner.”
Wyatt appeared in the doorway, beelining right for the food. “Did you say dinner—Aw, man,” he grumbled, pawing through the bags. “Leftovers again? You used to cook.”
“I did cook,” I said indignantly. “At work.”
He sighed.
“What our dear boy means,” Grandma said, “is that you put extra love into your home cooking versus your work cooking. I really hope you’re not letting this job destroy your secret dream of having your own café.”
I wasn’t sure I trusted myself with my secret dream anymore, but that didn’t seem to stop me from having it… “It’s hardly a secret if you keep talking about it.”
Grandma shrugged. “Keeping secrets ages you. Why do you think I don’t look a day over thirty-nine?”
Wyatt, who’d just taken an unfortunate sip directly from the orange juice container he’d pulled from the fridge, choked.
“I hope it went up your nose,” I said. “And for the millionth time, stop drinking straight from the container.” I turned back to Grandma.
“I still love cooking.” I did. Now, did I love my job?
Not…fully. I got to see Vi and Renee every day, and also create some fun menus, but Kiera was perpetually grumpy and the hours sucked.
Wyatt, still digging through the to-go boxes as if he hadn’t seen food in a year, came up for air with a piece of roasted chicken .
“Utensils!” I said.
“Utensils!” Pika-boo yelled from the living room.
Wyatt rolled his eyes again.
“They’re going to fall right out of your head one of these days.
” Dear God, I sounded like an old woman.
But when I’d been Wyatt’s age, I’d been struggling to keep up with schoolwork while always scheming a way out of having to go off with my mom for some lounge singer position that she wouldn’t be able to hold on to.
Those years were in my rearview now, but sometimes I still felt like that kid who had too much on my shoulders, knowing that any financial security for my family would have to come from me. I’ve spent a lot of hours robbing Peter to pay Paul, and I was eager for that to be over with.
I grabbed a piece of chicken.
“Utensils,” Wyatt said, heavy on the sarcasm.
After eating, I spent the rest of the evening setting up bill payments online, while continuously checking the water level in the bucket in the laundry room from our leaky roof since it was raining again.
Every time I emptied it out, I groaned at the dishes still in the sink.
Much, much later, I finally fell into bed so that I could get on the hamster wheel and do it all over again tomorrow.
I’d no sooner fallen asleep than I heard Wyatt whisper my name from the doorway.
I sat straight up. “What’s wrong?”
“Are you going to leave and go back home?”
“This is home.”
“I’m talking about Seattle. Where you lived before you came back to take care of us.”
I turned on my bedside lamp to find him standing there in his pj’s, hair wild, eyes worried, looking so young my heart squeezed. “Wyatt…where’s this coming from? I’ve got no plans to leave.”
“Yeah, but Mom’ll show back up sooner or later.” He shrugged a bony shoulder. “And you’ll leave. Like Mom always does.”
I drew a deep breath. “I’m not going anywhere, not as long as I’m needed.”
He scowled. “That’s one of those adult answers, and it’s bullshit.”
“ Wyatt .”
“No, it is. You think I’m a kid and because of it, you don’t tell me the truth. Maybe because as soon as you think we’re good, you’re out.” He stormed off.
“Hey,” I called after him. “I’m not going anywhere!”
In answer, his bedroom door clicked shut. He didn’t believe me. I dropped my head back to my pillow. Was he right? After being here the past six months for “family obligations,” would I walk away once my mom showed up again, as she inevitably would?
I thought of Grandma, getting older, trying to do too much on her own. Wyatt, only twelve, constantly abandoned by our flaky mom.
They needed me.
No, that wasn’t quite right. My life had detonated, and I was trying to make a comeback, but I still didn’t fully trust myself or my choices at the moment.
Which meant I needed them far more than they needed me.