3. Sibling Revelry
CHAPTER 3
SIBLING REVELRY
LEDGER
T he moment I open the front door to my mom’s house for our weekly family dinner, I can hear sounds of everyone chatting coming from the kitchen and dining room at the other end of the long hall. And the sound of Blake’s toddler daughter shouting “ Wedgejo ”— her best attempt at saying my name— as she runs toward me, hands up in the air.
“ There’s my favorite rocket ship!” I say as I scoop her up and swing her around to sit atop my shoulders. And , as is our custom, she raises her hands up so she can run them along the ceiling, making “rocket ship” sounds as we head down the hallway.
In the kitchen, my sister Charlie is showing my future sister-in-law, Mackenzie , something on her phone and they’re both laughing. Jace is, of course, next to Mackenzie , my brothers Miles and Blake are talking to my mom. So everyone except Emerson is here .
I like that Mackenzie comes to all of our family dinners now. The more the merrier, if you ask me. As long as Jace doesn’t go off and get all boring now that he’s engaged. I mean, I do like that he’s happier and less stodgy. I like the happier part because that means he’s down to do more fun things. But I’ve seen friends get married, and it doesn’t take long before their lives get boring. Like cry-into-your-tax-forms boring.
I am never going to let someone trap me and make me boring. I suppress a shudder. Tie me up and make me watch daytime talk shows, force me to fold endless laundry, and pluck out my nose hairs one by one if you want, but don’t ever trap me in a boring life.
I walk over to my mom, put my free arm around her shoulders, and give her a hug. My mom gives me a squeeze back. Heidi wants in on the action, but I’m enough taller than my mom that Heidi can’t reach her, even though she does try. Instead , she sticks a leg straight out, and my mom gives her foot a squeeze.
“ Is Emerson coming?” I ask.
My mom shakes her head. “ He’s at work.”
I grin because I can tell by the look in her eyes that it means Zoe is back with the case and that the CIA kept their word and shared with the CSA the info I’d worked so hard to get. So now it’s time for Emerson’s team to do their analyzing thing.
“ Hey ,” Miles says, “ I wasn’t in the office to catch you adding another tally mark to Zoe’s side of the board, but I heard you bit the dust so hard they had to scrape you off the floor. ”
If I didn’t currently have Heidi on my shoulders, I might grab his baseball hat and hold it just out of reach, or do something equally childish and every bit as brotherly.
“ Hey ,” Jace says, walking over from the table. “ Save the smack talk for the court.”
“ Court ?” I say, cocking my head at one of my favorite words.
Jace grins. “ We thought that maybe you’d want to burn off a little steam after being trounced on earlier today.”
I shoot him a look at the use of the word “trounced,” but then he adds, “ So we thought a little footvolley is in order. We can go to the sand court at Shadowridge park.”
“ Really ?” Heidi starts squirming, so I reach up to lift her off my shoulders and set her back on the ground.
Miles nods and clasps Blake on the shoulder. “ We even managed to talk this curmudgeon into joining us.”
All thoughts of Zoe besting me flee my mind— okay, most of them do— and I grin as I say, “ All right man.” I hold out my fist for Blake to bump, but he just grumbles. “ You think you can swing those legs of yours high enough to be any real competition?”
“ You better hope so, because you and I are on a team.”
I look to Jace and Miles . “ You paired ‘oldest and youngest’ against ‘middle children’ again?” I definitely said “middle children” with a lot of sarcasm.
“ We figure it’s the fairest pairing,” Miles says. “ Experience and youth teamed against good looks and skill.”
“ Youth ? ”
Miles shrugs. “ I was born on a different day, a different month, and a different year, so you’ll always be the ‘youth,’ bro. Even when we are eighty.”
“ You’re older by twelve minutes .”
“ Older is older.”
I’m glad that we weren’t born in the years 1999 and 2000 because if Miles could also claim being born in a different decade and a different century than me, he’d be unbearable. I can tell by the mischievous smile on his face that he’s just saying it to get a rise out of me, so I’m not going to give it to him. Instead , I respond with, a very calm, “ That’s okay because we all know who got all the ‘ First Baby of the New Year ’ accolades.”
“ Yeah , but we were both in those pictures, and I’m the one who was the most photogenic.”
I am still bitter about those pictures. I mean, they could’ve waited until I stopped wailing to take them. Since Heidi’s no longer on my shoulders, I wrap my arm around Miles’s neck in a fake choke hold. Which is easy, since I’m a good six inches taller than him.
“ Boys ,” my mom says. “ Are you ready to stop flexing? Because CarterQue Barbeque made a beef brisket that smells like heaven, and I’m hungry.”
Blake goes to where it’s warming in the oven and pulls it out, and my stomach immediately growls. It does smell like heaven. I drop my arm from around Miles and turn to Charlie . “ Are you going to play?”
Charlie shakes her head. “ Nope . Us girls,” she says, motioning to our mom, Mackenzie , and Heidi , “have plans tonight. Mackenzie’s friend Livi is coming over, and we are giving each other pedicures. ”
“ Oh , fun,” I say, not meaning it. I turn to Mackenzie . “ Are you sure you’re okay with us taking your man tonight?”
“ Silly Ledger ,” Mackenzie says, wrapping her arm around Jace’s waist and gazing up at him. “ We can handle being apart.” Then she puts on an exaggerated expression of fear. “ We can, can’t we?” And then they kiss.
Yeah , Jace is definitely on the path to becoming boring.
Not me. I’m going to eat that delicious brisket, mac and cheese, and baked beans, and then Blake and I are going to show Miles and Jace just how much trouncing “youth and experience” can do.
When we get to the park, the sun has set, but there are plenty of lamps lighting the area. The sand volleyball court is being used by a group of high schoolers, and not a single one of them is playing like they are trying to win. Such a waste of a good court.
But there is a pickleball court available and in a pinch… well, a court is a court.
“ This will work,” Blake says, assessing it.
Miles nodded. “ You’re just happy that you’ll actually be able to get it over the net, old man.”
“ Just try to keep up, ‘kid.’ And try not to cry when you’re eating our dust.”
Footvolley is basically volleyball but uses soccer rules when it comes to touching the ball. So feet, legs, and heads only. Jace serves the ball, drop-kicking it over the net. Blake takes it, using his head to bump it toward me, and I kick high, sending it back over the net. “ If we’re playing on a pickleball court, we can’t just call this footvolley. What do we call it? Foot pickle?”
“ No ,” Blake says, catching the ball with his hands, stopping its motion, which goes completely against the rules of this game. “ We are not calling it that. I veto. We’re still using a footvolley ball, anyway.”
“ Volleyfootpickle ?” I say. “ Pickle -volley-foot? Foot -pickle-volley.”
“ Just stop. Seriously .”
“ Footvolley for the height-challenged player?” Miles suggests.
“ I’ve got it,” Jace says. “ Footvolley in a pickle.”
“ Foot volley for those with skills too low for a high net,” I offer, mostly because our suggestions are annoying Blake .
“ I don’t know,” Miles says. “ I’m kind of a fan of PickleFoot .”
Maybe to get us to stop with the bad jokes, Blake tosses the ball back to Jace to re-serve then says, “ So , you were out in the field today, huh? Anywhere fun?”
“ That’s classified.” And he knows it. “ But I will say it was close enough to travel to by helicopter.”
I don’t think that Blake appreciates everyone in the family except him being in the know about cases we’re working on at the CSA . But he’s the one who chose to turn his back on the family business and become a dentist, of all things. He probably wouldn’t like field work, but he’s smart enough that he could’ve been an analyst, like Emerson , or a handler, like Charlie . Or he could’ve worked in any of the sub-levels. With his knowledge of facial anatomy and his precision skills, maybe he could be like Abraham and work with disguises.
Or maybe he just wishes he could travel to different locations at the drop of a hat like we do. But with Heidi , that isn’t exactly possible.
Who am I kidding? Blake doesn’t do anything without spending weeks planning it first. Even if he didn’t hate the CSA , he would hate being an intelligence operative.
“ If Zoe beat you to the objective,” Blake says as he kicks the ball over the net, “does that mean you didn’t finish the mission?”
A muscle in my neck twinges. “ I don’t think you get how this smack-talk thing works. You’re supposed to be antagonizing our competition , not your teammate .”
“ I’m just trying to understand. You’re okay just walking away from the mission, leaving it unfinished?”
Blake would never just walk away from something, leaving it unfinished, whether it was a root canal, a DIY home project, or a five-course meal.
“ I’m not just leaving it unfinished,” I say. “ The mission is still moving forward, and right now, it’s in Emerson’s court.” I do a twisting jump kick, sending the ball over the net and downward like a missile. Jace dives for it but doesn’t get it before it hits the ground.
“ How are you not calling him every five minutes to get an update?” Blake asks.
“ First off,” I say, not taking my eyes off Miles because Blake is going to serve to him, and he’s wearing a pretty intense expression, “any info he discovers goes straight to the director—”
“ To Mom ,” Blake interrupts.
“—to Mom , first, so he’s not going to tell me. As of right now, I’ve already done my part of the job.”
“ If by his ‘part of the job,’” Jace says as Blake serves the ball, “he means letting Zoe secure the objective before he does.”
“ See ?” I say as I motion to Jace . “ That’s how you smack talk.” Then I kick the ball that Miles sent my direction over the net, aiming straight at Jace’s head. “ Anyway , right now, it’s Emerson’s turn with the case. It’s called working together as a team.”
Miles and Jace work together— Jace bumps the ball to Miles using his head, Miles bumps it back to him using his knee, and Jace twists in the air as he sends the ball over the net and toward the ground. Blake goes for the ball but doesn’t get there before it bounces off the pickleball court.
I hold out a hand to pull him up. “ Something that you clearly know nothing about.”
“ I’m just saying that I wouldn’t walk away with things not finished,” Blake says, picking up the ball and throwing it back to the other side.
“ When it’s my turn again, I’ll be there with bells on. In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy some family adventure. This moment right now is for blowing off steam. And the only thing I need to worry about is smack-talking and making sure we win.”