Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 113923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113923 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
“Not this time,” he says, gazing off at the passing traffic. Emphatic. Stoic. “I’m with Coop. I think it’s better if you didn’t come around anymore.”
I fight the urge to throw my arm around my brother. Not here. Not in front of her. But I know the pain he’s feeling. The loneliness. Evan lost his mom today.
I lost mine a long time ago.
Shelley makes one last attempt to get us in line until she realizes we aren’t budging. Then the act falls apart. Her smile recedes to flat indifference. Her eyes grow dull and mean. Voice bitter. In the end, she has little in the way of parting words. Barely a glance as she blows smoke in our faces and walks to a waiting cab that carries her off to be someone else’s problem. We’re all better for it.
Even if it doesn’t feel that way right now.
Later, as Mac orders us a pizza for dinner, Evan and I take Daisy for a walk. We don’t talk about Shelley. Hell, we don’t talk much at all. We’re in somber spirits. Each of us is lost in our own thoughts, and yet I know we’re thinking the exact same things.
When we return to the house, we find Levi on the back deck, sipping a beer. “Hey,” he calls at our approach. “I came by to see how it went at the police station.”
Evan heads inside to grab two beers for us, while I stand at the railing and fill our uncle in. When I reach the part where Shelley disappeared in a taxi without so much as a goodbye, Levi nods in grim satisfaction.
“Think she got the message this time?” he asks.
“Maybe? She looked pretty defeated.”
“Can’t say I’m sorry for her.” Levi never got along with Shelley, even when she was around. I don’t blame him. The only redeeming quality about either of my parents was giving us a decent uncle.
“We’re orphans now,” Evan remarks, staring at the waves.
“Shit, guys, I know this ain’t easy. But you’re not alone in this. If you ever need anything…”
He trails off. But he doesn’t need to finish the sentence. Levi’s tried his damnedest to make us feel like a family despite all the missing pieces, and he’s done a pretty good job considering what he had to work with.
“Hey, I know we don’t say it enough,” I tell our uncle, “but we’re only standing here because you were there for us. You always are. If it weren’t for you, we would’ve ended up in the system. Shipped off to foster care. Probably separated.”
“We love you,” Evan adds, his voice lined with emotion.
It gets Levi a little choked up. He coughs, his way of covering it up. “You’re good boys,” is his gruff response. He’s not a man of sentiment or many words. Still, we know how he feels about us.
Maybe we never got the family we deserved, but we ended up with the one we needed.
CHAPTER FORTY
MACKENZIE
He’s being utterly unreasonable.
“You said you were going to pick up ice on your way home,” I shout from the backyard, where I’m standing with six coolers of warm beer and soda.
With February came a sudden ferocious winter, so while I’m freezing my butt off out here, the drinks are still hot to the touch because Evan left the cases sitting too close to the firepit. Now he’s taking a load off, and I’m left to wrestle with a folding table that is refusing to budge as I try prying the legs open. These folding tables must’ve been designed by a sadist, because I cannot for the life of me get them open.
“The freezer at the liquor store was broken,” Cooper responds from the deck. “Heidi said she’s going to swing by Publix on the way here and get some.”
“But the drinks won’t have time to chill before everyone else arrives. That’s the whole reason I sent you out early!” I’m about to rip my damn hair out. This is the third time I’ve tried explaining this to him, and still it’s like arguing with an ornery sand crab.
“I would have stopped, but it was out of the way and I wanted to get home to help set up. You’d rather I left you here to do everything by yourself?” he shouts back, throwing his hands up.
“I was here to help her,” Evan says from his chair. Where he’s been sitting on his ass drinking the last cold beer, instead of helping me set up. “She’s got a point, Coop,” he adds, nodding graciously at me, as if to say See, I’m on your side.
“Stay out of it,” Cooper tells him.
I glare at them both.
There have got to be few worse hells than sharing a birthday one day apart with a couple of barely housetrained twins. Last night, they had this brilliant idea to throw a massive last-minute party instead of the dinner I was planning, so now we’re rushing to put something together, except Evan is lazy and Cooper has all the logistical abilities of a herring.