“Morgan’s the instigator; I assure you.”
Landon glanced back at me and rolled his eyes. “You don’t fool as many people as you think you do.”
I sure hoped I did in that moment.
I held my hand out to my brother. Landon clasped it tight.
“I just want you to be happy. Tell me Miranda makes you happy.”
“Landon!” she shrieked. Her heels clomped across the hardwood floor, drawing ever nearer, like a dragon ready to breathe flames.
“You’re a good brother,” Landon said with a smile and shook my hand.
Miranda stomped into the room. “Would you hurry up, or would you rather me leave you behind so that you could be with your ex-girlfriend instead?”
Landon winced. “Come on, Miranda. I’ve told you a hundred times that I didn’t even know she was going to be here.”
“Well, I’m sure you’ll know when we’re back for Christmas so that you can sneak away and see her,” she accused.
“Seriously, she’s just back from college for a few days, visiting a friend. She’ll be gone before we get back. Calm down,” Landon said with a sigh.
“Whatever. Don’t make me late for the flight,” she said, turning on her heel and storming away.
“I’ll see you in a couple of weeks,” Landon said.
We hugged, and then he hurried down the hall toward his tyrant wife. And, while I was sad to see my brother go, I feared even more for the things he hadn’t said. One day, I would figure out the disaster that Miranda had created in our family but not today. Today, I had to go to church.
Eight
Emery
“I cannot believe you’re making me do this,” I said to Kimber as we stood outside of our mother, Autumn’s, house.
It was the house we’d grown up in. Small and squat with red clay bricks and dark roofing. Like everything in Lubbock, it had a monstrous fence for the entire backyard. A tree her mother had planted when she moved in towered over the property. The house was in one of those timeless parts of town. Nothing had changed, not even the people. They’d just settled here like dust.
“You were never going to come over here unless I made you,” Kimber said.
She mashed the old, smashed-in doorbell, and I could hear it hollering through the house, announcing our presence.
“Don’t act like you know me.”
Kimber snorted. “Okay. Done,” she said with a sarcastic bite.
The door popped open, and my mother’s face appeared in the doorway. She was gorgeous. Even at her age, she was still a knockout. It was a bit unfair to think that Kimber had gotten all of my mother’s beauty-queen looks, and I had only gotten her snarky wit and unbearable attitude.
“Well, look what the cat dragged in,” she said.
“Funny, Mom. I’ve never heard that one before,” I said with a grin.
“You’re not too old to have your ass paddled, young lady.”
Kimber nudged me forward, and I laughed. My mother had never paddled me in my life. Believe it or not, Kimber was the troublemaker.
The three of us wandered into the living room, and my mother closed the door behind us. Everything was exactly how it had always been—same brown fabric furniture with our initials scrawled into the wooden paneling on the side, my great-grandmother’s china cabinet full to the brim with my mother’s Precious Moments collection, and a sea of pictures on the mantel. At least some of those were new, the pictures with Noah and Lilyanne as additions.
But not a trace of my father. He had been swept clean out of the house since he walked out on my mom when I was a kid. Only a forgotten old military medal and a box of photographs in the attic crawl space remained.
We all took seats around the living room, suffocating from our past.
“If I’m not too old for a paddling, that means you’re not too old either, Mom,” I told her, searching for levity.
“Oh, I know, honey.” Then, she winked at me. “You know, I’ve been talking to Harry Stevenson across the way, and he used to be a police officer.”
“Oh God, Mom!” I said, covering my ears.
My mother cackled with glee at my embarrassment. “Now, where is my granddaughter? You can’t make me feel old by popping out babies, Kimber Leigh,” she said, patting my sister’s very pregnant belly, “and then not bring them around when you come visit.”
“Lilyanne is with Noah. We’re going to meet up with them at the church.”
“I suppose that will be fine,” Autumn said with a sigh of dejection. “How am I supposed to spoil her rotten?”
“You’re doing just fine at that,” Kimber said.
My mother’s eyes returned to me, assessing me in that uncanny way only she could do, and then she smiled softly. Light wrinkles crinkled around her eyes. Happy wrinkles. The ones I adored.