AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Is she here?” Maddie asks.
“Yes, and I understand if you don’t want to see her right now, but somehow I think this has all been just as hard on her,” I say.
Her head snaps back, looking at me like I’m crazy for defending my mom, but I know that she doesn’t have the whole story, so I let it slide.
“You’re defending her?”
“Yes, I am. Maddie… everything happened years before your parents met, so really, she didn’t do anything wrong,” I say, but her stern expression says she doesn’t feel that way.
“I get it. If you brush it off, it feels like a betrayal to your mom,” I say. Her expression softens and I know I’ve got it right. “But it’s in the past, and I think that’s where we need to leave it. It sucks that they lied to us, but being mad won’t change anything.”
Her eyes start to water, and I pull her into a big bear hug. “You’re still my favorite cousin, only now you’ve been upgraded to the sister package,” I say.
She shakes with laughter against my chest, and I rub a soothing circle over her back before leaning her back to smile at her.
“An upgrade, huh?” She sniffles and I nod. “Does this upgrade come with any perks?”
“You would,” I chuckle and playfully shove her arm.
Leading her inside, she gets to work on sweeping and dusting the kitchen while I finish up with the windows and move on to the next room.
“Knock-knock,” a familiar voice echoes down the hall.
I walk out to find Milo standing in the doorway, the afternoon sun haloing his head and shoulders.
“Hey, man, what are you doing here?” I ask, stepping in and clapping him on the back in a quick hug.
“I ran into Rob in town. He gave me the rundown on what you guys were doing and I figured you might want some help,” he says, hands shoved in his pockets.
“Yeah, that would be great,” I say.
“Cool, where do you want me?” he asks, scanning the living room. “Looks like this room is good to go.”
I nod, looking over the room.
“You should’ve seen it when we got here,” I chuckle.
“Bo, can you come grab these trash bags?” Maddie yells from the kitchen.
“Coming,” I call back and then turn to Milo. “Actually, can you go grab those from her? She’s just through there,” I point in the direction of the kitchen. “I’m going to grab the trash from the next room and then we can haul it out front.”
“Sure thing,” he says and heads toward Maddie.
I grab the assortment of random trash bags left behind by my mom as she wanders from room to room, and by the time I have them all, my arms are overflowing. I carry them all out front and drop them in an old garbage can.
I scratch the back of my head and look over the pile of bags. I’m going to have to call Waste Management and have regular pickups scheduled again.
Milo comes stomping out the front door, carrying a giant black trash bag in each hand. What on earth has that girl been doing in there?
When he steps closer, I see that his brows are pulled down low over his eyes, as if in concentration, but the way his eyes are unfocused and lost has me wondering what happened in the few minutes since I last saw him.
“What’s up? You look like you’ve seen a ghost or some shit,” I laugh.
“Yeah… I mean, no, I’m good. I, uh, I guess I just didn’t recognize Mads for a minute,” he says.
“I guess it has been a while since we all last hung out,” I say. He nods automatically, but still seems lost in thought.
“Yeah, I think she was like thirteen or something the last time I saw her,” he says.
