Harder (Caroline & West #2)(78)

But Caroline gets what Caroline wants, so off we all go two days after Christmas to the Piasecki homestead.

Caroline’s from the kind of family with a dining room, and a dining room table, and a tablecloth that’s old, with a lace strip down the middle and candles and dishes that match.

I get through dinner by saying either please or thank you at the end of every sentence and otherwise keeping my mouth shut.

Frankie does good. She’s completely baffled by the gravy boat, and she drops cranberry sauce on her lap, but she’s ten, so nobody minds. Caroline braided her hair and picked out her clothes. She’s shiny and bright in the candlelight, pretty as a picture in a book.

When Caroline sits beside her sisters and her dad, I can see her face reflected in theirs—her eyes from her dad, nose and chin probably her mother’s legacy.

Janelle is the loudest, and kind of bossy. Alison’s just home from a stint in the Peace Corps. She’s thin and quiet, overwhelmed-looking.

Caroline’s dad is like a band director at the top of the table, big gestures and big hands waving around, jowls and disapproving eyebrows that would be intimidating except that when he smiles at his girls, he looks like Santa Claus—all soft belly and sparkling eyes.

He smiles at Frankie that way, too, so I can’t make myself dislike him no matter how many suspicious looks he sends my way.

I’ve met him exactly twice. The first time, I did the best I could to come across as a moronic horndog. The second time, I was in jail. If it takes him a decade to warm up to me, it’s no worse than I deserve.

Caroline doesn’t like it, though. Every time he gives me some tiny measure of shit, she gives it right back to him, and the conversational temperature rises degree by degree, until the both of them are a little hot.

Everywhere I look, I see something to remind me what kind of childhood Caroline had. School pictures on the wall. Framed kid drawings. A bedraggled brown paper football-looking thing in the center of the table that Caroline says is supposed to be a turkey Janelle made in kindergarten.

I can’t get worked up about her dad’s disapproval because I’m too busy looking around this place, thinking, This is what safe looks like.

Not the size of the house. Not the neighborhood or the leather sectional sofa or the turkey on the table, but the way these people are together, familiar and affectionate, tuned in to one another, telling Frankie funny stories from when the three girls were little whose punchlines don’t depend on anybody getting hurt or humiliated.

I can’t send my sister back to Silt.

I won’t. Not if there’s any chance she could have this instead.

After dinner, everybody’s got presents to exchange, which is awkward because Frankie and I didn’t have enough warning to buy anything, but they’ve got stuff for us. Nice stuff—a pair of leather gloves with fur in them for me, a set of birthstone earrings and a cashmere scarf for Frankie.

I can’t sit still through it. I end up ducking out to use the bathroom, then pass by the kitchen, where all that dirty china’s stacked up by the sink just begging to be washed.

I’m about halfway through the dishes when Caroline comes in, picks up a towel, and gets to work drying.

“You okay?” she asks.

“Yeah. Frankie being good?”

“She’s great. She went out with Janelle to get butter so they can make Christmas shortbread.”

“She wasn’t begging, was she?”

“It was Janelle’s idea. And you know it’s fine if she’s not perfectly polite. Everybody understands.”

Caroline’s dad comes in. He stops short when he sees us by the sink.

“Coffee?” Caroline asks.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll make it,” she says. “You can dry the dishes.”

To me, she notes, “It’s actually his job. I’m usually the one who washes. I can’t get the dishes dried well enough to meet his exacting specifications.”

So then it’s me and Mr. Piasecki, side by side at the sink, and Caroline bustling around the kitchen grinding beans and measuring.

“When are you going back?” her dad asks her.

“Probably in a few hours. After the shortbread, if that’s okay with West.”

“Why wouldn’t it be okay?” I ask.

“If we stay that long, Frankie will be up past her bedtime.”

“It’s fine. She’ll fall asleep in the car.”

“You could stay over,” her dad says. “We’ve got two rooms empty upstairs even with Alison here, and that air mattress we could put up in the finished part of the basement—”

“Three rooms, Dad?” Caroline asks. “Really? You’re going to go with that?” She hops up on the countertop next to my left elbow, putting me right in the line of fire between the two of them.

Her dad glances at me. “Is this how it is, West?”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“She’s living with you, taking care of your sister for you, and now you won’t even let her visit overnight for Christmas unless I let you share a room?”

“No, sir,” I say. “That’s not how it is.”

“That’s sure what it sounds like.”

I clear my throat. Try to think of some way to say it that’s tactful, but f*ck it. I’m not tactful. “Caroline’s in charge. I just go by whatever she wants.”