The Lemon Sisters (Wildstone #3)(4)

“Hi, Aunt Brooke,” Millie said politely before turning back to her mom. “Momma, Mad Dog peed on Mason again.” She held up her hands like a surgeon waiting to have her gloves put on. She ran the pads of her thumbs across the tips of her fingers four times in a row. “I’ve got to wash my hands. Can I wash my hands?”

“Down the hall,” Brooke said, heart tugging for the kid. “First door on the right’s the bathroom.”

Millie ran down the hall. They heard the bathroom door shut and then the lock clicked into place. And out of place. And back into place. Four times.

So maybe Millie was more Brooke’s Mini-Me than Mindy’s . . . Brooke didn’t know much about kids, and she was certainly in no position to tell her sister how to live her life, but things did seem out of control—something Mindy had never been a day in her life. Her car was parked in Brooke’s short driveway, the doors open. Two little boys were rolling around on the grass. One was naked.

“Yours, I presume,” Brooke said.

Mindy was staring at them like one might stare at an impending train wreck. “Yeah. Want one?”

She ignored the way her stomach clenched. “Tell me more about Linc.”

Mindy sighed. “I keep up the house, work at the shop thirty hours a week, and handle all the kid and life stuff. I’m the heavy. The bad cop. And I get that Linc and his brother, Ethan, had to take over their dad’s medical practice when he had a stroke, but that wasn’t in our life plan. And now Ethan’s having some sort of midlife crisis and taking a lot of time off, which leaves Linc working seventy hours a week. When he finally walks in after a long day, I’m invisible. And the kids, they love the good cop. I want to be the good cop.”

“So be the good cop,” Brooke said.

“I can’t be the good cop. I’ve tried. I’m too anal.” Mindy lowered her voice to a whisper. “I want to be you, Brooke. You get to bounce all over the planet, living out wild adventure after wild adventure, and you get paid to do it. No wonder you never come home.”

It wasn’t adventure that kept her away from Wildstone. Shame, maybe. Okay, definitely. And regrets. Lots of regrets. She’d been haunted by them for seven years, throughout which she’d stayed away from her childhood town, only four hours north of here.

But sometimes in the deep dark of the night, she dreamed about going back.

Pushing those thoughts aside, she stared into her sister’s red-rimmed, despairing eyes. She knew despair. She knew it to the depths of her soul, and some of the pent-up resentment she’d been holding for Mindy and her very perfect life shifted slightly. It didn’t fade away, not exactly; more like it just moved over to make room for a teeny-tiny amount of compassion and empathy. “Why don’t you head into the kitchen and pour yourself a glass of wine,” she said. “I’ve got the kids for now.”

“You do?” Mindy asked with clear disbelief.

“Yeah.” If there was one thing Brooke had down, it was the ability to bullshit her way through any situation. She’d summited Mount Kilimanjaro, the roof of Africa. She’d been one of the few to get to and photograph the limestone formations of the Stone Forest in China. She’d gone swimming with giants—migrating humpback whales—along the waters of Ningaloo Reef in Australia. Certainly she could handle her sister and her kids. She waited until Mindy had vanished inside before calling out to the boys wrestling in the grass. “Hey.”

Neither of them looked at her.

She put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. Loudly. All destruction and mayhem stopped on a dime and two sets of eyeballs turned her way. “Inside,” she said. “Everyone to the couch.”

The boys met up with the freshly washed-up Millie in the living room, and they all sat, even the naked one. Brooke winced, but let it go. She opened her laptop and scrolled her way to a menu of Disney flicks to stream. They were rated by viewer age, which was helpful. “Okay, so you’re almost three,” she said, pointing to the nudie-patootie, Maddox. “And almost four, right?” she asked the one with clothes, which meant he was Mason. He nodded, and she turned to the oldest. “Millie?”

Millie didn’t answer.

Brooke looked at Mason.

“She’s almost eight,” he said.

Brooke looked at Millie. “Is this movie okay?”

Millie didn’t answer this question, either.

“You have to call her Princess Millie,” Mason said. His knee was bloody. “She only answers to Princess Millie.”

“Right.” Brooke sent a glance toward the kitchen, but heard nothing from Mindy. Either she’d made a run for it through the garage, or she was hiding out, drinking her wine in peace. Brooke went to her backpack, pulled out the first-aid kit she always carried with her, and grabbed the antiseptic.

Mason covered his knee. “Only need a Band-Aid.”

While she could appreciate the sentiment more than he knew, the cut was dirty. She doctored him up and looked at Millie. “Back to the movie. The Lion King or no?”

Millie shook her head. “The dad dies and it makes Mad Dog cry.”

“Yeah, me, too,” Brooke said, and scrolled to Toy Story 3.

“That one makes all of us cry,” Millie said. “And you can’t play Frozen, either. Mason will sing it for three straight days until Momma says she needs a pill.”