Dream Chaser (Dream Team, #2)(2)

“After you’re done, honey, you too with the washup. Do you need to take anything to school?”

She nodded. “Yeah. But my book bag is ready.”

I hated to ask what I next had to ask because I had been that kind of sister to my brother when I was seven.

Keeping track of him.

Keeping track of me.

“Do you, uh…know about your brother?”

She shoved more cereal in her mouth and said in a garbled way I still could decipher before chewing it, “Show and tell day today. I put something in his bag. He’ll figure it out.”

“Chew and swallow, Portia,” I urged carefully, not her mother, but needing to be motherly, which pissed me off because I wanted to be Fun Auntie Rynnie, not Fuddy Duddy Aunt Kathryn. “Don’t talk with your mouth full.”

She looked down at her bowl and her cheeks got pink.

Crap.

Fuddy Duddy Aunt Kathryn sucked.

I moved to the table and started to clean up Jethro’s breakfast.

“You should make Mom do that, you know,” Portia said.

“When she beats this headache, we’ll just give her a little break,” I replied.

“Yeah, another one,” she mumbled, dropped her spoon in her still half-filled bowl and jumped off the chair she was using, having been sitting on her knees.

She took the bowl to the sink and dumped it in.

“I’ll finish that. We need to get sorted and go,” I told her.

“’Kay,” she muttered, and didn’t look at me when she walked by.

I stopped her retreat, asking, “Did your mom get lunches packed?”

She turned, looked me right in the eyes and asked, “You’re kidding, right?”

Oh yeah.

Impatience.

And demonstrating a frustrated maturity that I was not a big fan of the fact that she was forced to be developing.

“We’ll make lunches in a sec,” I said.

She had no response to that. She just took off.

I rinsed the bowls, put them in the dishwasher, wiped down the table, put away the cereal and milk and then moved out to find and check their book bags.

When it seemed all was set, I finished my inspection by zipping up Portia’s bag and moved down the hall, hearing the kids talking low and quiet in the bathroom.

I knocked on Angelica’s door softly then opened it to stick my head in, seeing complete dark and a lump on the bed under covers.

“Hey, I’m here, got the kids,” I called.

The lump moved. “Heard. Um, can you come in a second?”

I slid in and closed the door behind me.

Angelica didn’t turn on a light, but in the shadows, I saw her push up to an elbow.

“Listen, Jethro’s got some end-of-year field trip he’s going on and they need fifty bucks plus whatever money he’ll need for lunch, which they say will cost fifteen to twenty dollars.”

Fifteen to twenty dollars for lunch for a first grader?

I did not get those words out of my mouth before Angelica went on, “Brian’s fucked me over for support again and things are tight this month. I’m already gonna hafta ask Mom to pay cable and electricity. But I don’t wanna have to tell Jethro he can’t go.”

She didn’t even hesitate anymore. Didn’t lead into it.

No longer did I get a, “I hate to say this,” or “This sucks I gotta ask.”

Just, “I don’t wanna have to tell Jethro he can’t go.”

Well, if you got a job and maybe cut the premium package on your cable, even if my brother is a deadbeat, you might be able to cover some of your bills and take care of your children, I did not say.

What I said was, “I’ll leave some money on the table.”

I said this a lot.

It was closing in on the end of May and I’d already given her three hundred and seventy-five dollars this month.

Last month, it had been over five hundred.

And next month, with the way the kids were growing, summer having already hit Denver, they’d need new clothes. And Angelica worried they’d be teased or bullied if they didn’t have the good stuff, so I could plan on a plea to have a “Day with Auntie Ryn” which included taking them shopping. With the added asks that were sure to come, I’d probably be laying out at least a grand.

“Thanks,” she muttered, the lump in bed shifted, and that was it.

I stood there a second, staring at her before I turned and left, clicking the door shut behind me.

My bad.

Conditioning.

I’d conditioned her.

Like I’d done with my brother.

When I started to get niggles of concern when there wasn’t a get-together we had where he didn’t get obnoxiously drunk, I should have said something.

And then it wasn’t even get-togethers, just anytime I saw him, he’d be drinking, clearly on his way to being obnoxiously drunk, before he became that. Thinking he was funny. Or cute. Or waxing poetic about shit where he thought he was stunning all of us with his brilliance, when he barely made sense.

I should have said something then too.

I should have said, “Hey, Brian, go easy.”

Or, “Hey, Brian, what in the hell-blazin’ fuck? Honest to God, do you have to be fucked up all the time?”

I did not do this.