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If I were him, I would resent me to the moon and back.
His little head falls against my shoulder as I begin to spiral, and Alana rises. “He adores you.” She lifts her hand, and he rumbles, lips pulled back in an immediate growl. “Oh, come on. I’m a pet sitter, for crying out loud. And we’re Irish twins, dang it. Don’t I smell enough like B?”
Ollie snuffs, and I guess the answer is no.
Chapter 13
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sisters will always believe you, so be careful what you say.
Truthfully, I think I’d be less anxious during an FBI interrogation. In a dark room. With a single flickering light bulb suspended above me. And fourteen men in suits packing heat filling the shadows.
Okay. Maybe that’s not very truthful, and I’m just being extremely dramatic.
That said, if this is what Ollie has felt like during all my questions, I’m so sorry.
Mom piles a lump of mashed butternut squash on my plate while the four of us sit around the cherry wood table in my parents’ lavish middle-class dining room, complete with plastic crystal chandelier. Without smiling, she says, “You mentioned a big work project yesterday, Brittny. How’s that going?”
I smile. “Good.” As long as I don’t think about all the work I have to redo, which could have been avoided, if people had just listened to me in the first place.
“Good?” Dad comments as he nudges the fried onions off his steak burger and quarantines them in the corner of his plate. He’ll eat them all at once later with his face turned at an angle where Mom’s disapproval will not be quite as scathing.
Years ago, when little Brittny was trying to figure out marriage and romance, she asked her mother a question about love.
Her mother replied that love was tolerating when your husband deconstructed his meals after you’d painstakingly put them together.
The bar was so much lower than little Brittny thought.
I barely get a bite down. “Yeah, things are going well. I organized information and theorized a concept from it that could bring hundreds of thousands to the company.” If it’s executed correctly.
Outlook not good.
Dad’s expression darkens. “Aren’t you just an assistant?”
“If you’re going to be bringing hundreds of thousands of dollars to this company, they should be paying you better,” Mom snips.
“Paying her better?” Dad adds. “They should be giving you a promotion on top of better pay. Someone else can get coffee.”
Mom stabs her food. “You know what it is? You’re too expensive to replace. They won’t find anyone else they can walk all over like you let them.”
Beside me, Alana mutters something in Japanese, rolls her eyes, and lifts her plate, flicking her brussels sprouts onto mine with her pretty pink fiberglass chopsticks.
“Alana—” Mom starts.
“Twenty-five-year-old woman capable of deciding baby cabbages are evil and taste like balls of weeds,” Alana declares, pointing the chopsticks at Mom.
A tiny line forms between Mom’s brows. “They’re good for you. Maybe if you ate more vegetables, you’d be able to lose a little weight.”
“Mother.” Alana sits upright in her chair on her folded legs, like a Japanese princess. “Your cooking is immaculate, and I know you have put much thought into the nutritional value of the offered cabbage children; however, my mental health will deteriorate if I murder them.” With her slender, floral-painted chopsticks, she designates a random brussels sprout as it rolls into my fork. “This one’s name is Timmy, and he wants to be an astronaut.”
My eyes widen. “I don’t want to be the one to crush Timmy’s dreams.”
Alana drops her plate back on the rouge placemat in front of her and grips my arm. “Someone has to, Brittny. Someone has to.”
“Timmy’s too short,” Dad says, around his own mouthful of Timmy’s relatives. “He’d never be accepted to the program. NASA has already crushed Timmy’s dreams. You would be putting him out of his misery, Brittny.”
“Don’t encourage them,” Mom snaps, exasperated.
