Chapter 9
Aoife
“T hanks for coming with me,” I said for the third time as I pushed the cart down the aisle.
“Stop saying that,” Cian mumbled. “I’m just glad to get out of that house.”
“It’s not that bad,” I argued, grabbing cereal off the shelf.
“We’re in the middle of nowhere,” he bitched.
“So, go outside.”
“And do what?” he joked. “Play with the chickens? Sounds like a party.”
We’d been at Aunt Ashley’s for a week already.
The day after we got there, she started calling around to find my mom’s body, and since then, she’d been on the phone every day trying to figure out all the shit that needed to happen to get custody of us kids and settle my mom’s estate.
It felt weird to think of it that way. The word estate brought to mind someone with a mansion and fancy cars, not a middle-class woman with five kids who couldn’t stay sober for more than a few hours at a time.
“I’m just glad to be shopping,” I said, looking his way. “Takeout is getting old.”
“Aunt Ashley doesn’t cook,” he said with a laugh.
“Clearly.”
“At least you know that you’ll stay skinny even if you eat absolute junk all the time,” he joked. “You look just like her.”
“Oh, good.” I rolled my eyes. “That was at the top of my list of worries. Plus, I’m not skinny.”
He just shrugged.
“The kids are taking all of this pretty well,” I said as we started down another aisle.
“You mean beyond Aisling crying herself to sleep a couple of times.”
“Our mom just died,” I replied. “I’m more worried about Ronan. He’s barely said anything.”
“He’ll be fine.”
“I just thought he’d at least, I don’t know, say something.”
“He’s sad,” Cian said, throwing a bag of cookies into the cart. I let it slide. “But you know he’s the most logical out of all of us when he’s not being a pain in the ass.”
“Even logical people are upset when their parents die.”
“His parent didn’t die,” Cian said casually, walking ahead of me. “His parent is grocery shopping.”
I stopped in the middle of the aisle. Stunned.
“Keep it moving,” he ordered, pulling on the cart.
I started walking again.
“We’re all feeling it,” he said, his voice a little lower. “But I think Ash and Ro feel it differently than us. We remember the good shit, you know? They’re too little to remember how it used to be.”
“Yeah,” I agreed softly.
“I think they’re missing Richie more,” he said, looking back at me before turning forward again. “You gonna call him?”
“What’s the point?” I asked dully.
I’d wrestled with the decision every day since we got to Oregon. Richie was probably frantic with worry, but I was too much of a coward to call him. I was afraid if I heard his voice, I’d give in and tell him to follow us. The longer we went without speaking, the harder it was.
“You know, we might be able to go back,” Cian said, raising his eyebrows. “If Aunt Ashley can get it all settled.”
“I’m not getting my hopes up,” I replied, stopping in the middle of the baking aisle. “That social worker was pretty fucking clear.”
“Yeah, but Aunt Ashley said it’s different if she’s the legal guardian, and she shifts it to you.”
“I don’t know how that’s possible. Sounds like bullshit.”
“It could happen.”
“Don’t get your hopes up,” I warned him.
All of us were missing our house and everything familiar, but I couldn’t even think about moving home again.
I’d focused so hard on getting us to Aunt Ashley that the idea of living in our house with the kids seemed like a pipe dream. Unattainable. Outlandish.
“We’ll probably have to go back to empty the house, at least,” Cian reminded me. “If we’re selling it.”
“I was talking to Aunt Ashley about that,” I said, putting a bag of flour into the cart. “If the house is paid off like she thinks, it might be smarter to rent it out for a while. It would be extra income.”
“Or we could get a big chunk of money all at once,” Cian said with relish. “We could get a boat or something.”
I let out an incredulous laugh. “A boat?”
“Boats are the shit.”
“If we sold the house, I think we’d have to split the money between us,” I said, bringing him back to reality as I grabbed a bag of sugar. “And none of you would get your portion until you were older. Like eighteen or something.”
“Well, that’s bullshit.”
“Not sure that giving an eight-year-old thousands of dollars is a good idea,” I pointed out.
“That’s a fuck-ton of Barbies,” he agreed reluctantly.
“We’ll figure it out,” I said with a sigh as we kept moving. “Wherever we end up, we’ll be together.”
“I never doubted it,” he said easily. He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, not looking at me. “You know, Aunt Ashley would take us.”
I stared at the back of his head.
“You could move back with Richie. The four of us would stay together now. It’s not like we’d go to strangers or anything.”
I pushed the cart into the back of his legs, making him stumble.
“What the fuck?” he snapped, turning to face me.
“You stay with me ,” I said firmly. “Got it?”
“I’m just saying—” He jumped out of the way with a nervous laugh as I pushed the cart toward him again.
“I don’t care what you’re saying,” I shot back. “It’s not up for discussion. We stay together. That’s it.”
“You could have a whole ass life.” He threw his hands up in the air.
“I like my life with you guys. I don’t want anything else.”
“Except Richie.”
“If things are going to work out with Richie, it’ll happen,” I replied. “That’s not my priority right now.”
“Fine,” Cian snapped. “If you want to just give up your whole life to be our mam, that’s your problem.”
“I’ve been your mam since you were Ronan’s age,” I argued in frustration. “Why would it be any different now? Because an aunt we hardly know is willing to step in? Fuck that.”
Cian’s mouth snapped shut.
“Where is this coming from?” I asked as we started walking again.
“I don’t know,” he replied, scuffing his shoe along the floor. “Aunt Ashley came out here and went to grad school, and she’s got that house and all that stuff.”
“And I bet she’s lonely,” I pointed out.
Cian laughed. “I don’t think she’s lonely,” he replied dryly.
He was right. From what we’d seen since we got there, Aunt Ashley seemed to have a very full life hanging with friends and traveling and working whenever she needed the money.
“Let me rephrase,” I said, laughter in my voice. “ I would be lonely with that kind of life. I don’t want to be without you guys.”
“Fair enough.”
“But maybe that’ll be your life,” I said, bumping him with my shoulder. “College and grad school and some job that you barely have to do, and you still get paid loads of money.”
“Sounds boring,” he said with a grin. “Except the money part. That sounds sweet.”
“Come on, let’s finish this so we can get back. I don’t like the way Ronan’s been eyeballing those llamas.”
“They’re alpacas,” Cian corrected.
“What’s the difference?”
“No fucking clue.”
Later that evening, the kids were watching a movie while I baked. I’d never had a chance to make Cian’s cake for him, and I’d grabbed all the ingredients while we were shopping so I could remedy the situation. After the way he’d been my right hand for the last week, he deserved a little treat.
“Smells good in here,” Aunt Ashley said, wandering into the kitchen. “Carrot cake?”
“It’s Cian’s favorite,” I said, bringing dishes to the sink.
“I can’t believe he’s fourteen,” she said, leaning against the counter. “I remember when he was brand new.”
“Me too.”
“We haven’t had much time to talk,” she said quietly. “I talked to the attorney again yesterday.”
“What did she say?” I asked, keeping my voice low, too.
Between losing my mom and the rest of the upheaval, we’d decided that the kids had enough to deal with.
They didn’t need to know the minutiae that went into figuring out what happened with the house and Mom’s bank accounts and which funeral home had the best rates but didn’t seem shady.
“She said that we have a good chance of getting you permanent guardianship of your siblings.”
“But—”
“You’ve already been successfully raising them while attending high school,” she said, cutting me off. “Now you’re legally an adult, with a job—”
“Maybe,” I interrupted. “They weren’t happy about giving me time off.”
She waved that away. “If your mom owned the house, then you guys have a permanent residence already. You’re in a good position to ask for custody.”
“What if they say no?” I asked nervously.
“Then you have me,” she said, lifting her hands palms up. “If you can’t get guardianship, then I do. I know your parents have a will somewhere. When we find it, I’m positive they’ll give guardianship to me. There’s no way to lose. Either way, you’ll all stay together.”
“So, we need to go back home,” I said, glancing toward the living room. “We need to go through their paperwork.”
“Yeah, we do.”
“Okay.” I took a deep breath. “When?”
“Give me a couple days?” she asked, like I was the one in charge. “I need to ask my house sitter if she’ll come even though I canceled on her a week ago.”
“Sorry about that.”
She waved me off. “I can take the motorhome, so I have someplace to stay, and the littles can ride with me if they want. Give them a little space to stretch out.”
I nodded. I wasn’t looking forward to another long road trip crammed into my car like sardines.
“Leave Monday?” Aunt Ashley asked.
“Thank you so much for doing all this,” I whispered, tears filling my eyes.
When we’d gone in search of our aunt, she’d been an almost abstract idea.
We hadn’t seen her in so long, all we’d had were memories to assure us that we were doing the right thing.
Desperation had thankfully led us to exactly the right person, and I couldn’t adequately express what a huge relief it was that I’d made the right decision.
She’d gone above and beyond to figure everything out and make us feel safe while she did it.
“Of course,” she said, smiling. “Anything you need, remember?”