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“Sure. I mean, it’s weird, but whatever.”
Is that a good whatever or an I can’t be bothered whatever? I don’t know. I turn off the faucet and dry my hands. Rather than guess, I flash back to advice my shrink has given me over the years. Be kind and be honest. “Amanda, sometimes I feel…” Then I just rip off the Band-Aid. “Like I’m doing a terrible job with this whole thing. With you. Raising you.”
“With me?” she asks, incredulous.
“Yes.” That’s honest.
She shakes her head, shutting the dishwasher. “I don’t think so.” She’s certain where I’m not.
“You don’t?”
She’s quiet at first, then swallows and says, “You’re around more.” Her voice starts to crack.
Mine does too. “Than Mom or Dad?”
She nods, her blue eyes glistening.
“They weren’t around that much?” I ask to be sure since this is news to me. “I thought…” I thought they raised you differently than me.
“Els, they were kind of obsessed with recovery. That was their thing. Sobriety coaching. Being sponsors. Being there for their sponsees,” she says, her tone so vulnerable that it breaks my heart a little.
“I thought they were super parents,” I say, taking a beat to process this new intel.
“I mean, I loved them. I miss them. But I don’t think you’re like…a bad guardian.”
I laugh at the half compliment. “Thanks.”
“I mean it,” she says, genuinely. She dips her face, and when she raises it and meets my gaze I can tell she has something important to say. Maybe something that’s been weighing on her. “Sometimes I feel bad though. You had this whole life at age twenty-eight. You probably wanted to get married and settle down. And then I landed in your lap.”
My heart breaks even more. I reach for her, curl my hands over her shoulders. “Don’t ever doubt that this is where I want to be. With you.”
“Are you sure?” Tears slip from her eyes. I wipe them away.
“I never hesitated to take care of you. And I never will,” I say, my tone brooking no argument. “You’re mine. Do you understand?”
She places her head on my shoulder, pressing her face to me, nodding against me. “I like that you’re around. I like that you come to the studio. And play trivia games. I like that I get to work in the shop. I like that you tell me your crazy things. Like getting married. I never knew what was going on with them.”
I stroke her hair, marveling at this seismic shift in my view of my parents and maybe myself. Here I thought I was the wild, impulsive, irresponsible one. Maybe I am. But maybe there’s another side to the impulsive coin. Being honest with the people you love. “I never thought about keeping any of my crazy life from you, including this married part.”
She pulls away gently, offers me a small smile. “It’s kind of fun to be in on it. It’s like a giant prank. Or a game. And that dude is the worst,” she says, her nose curling as she brings up Sebastian.
“He is.”
I haven’t told her much about him. She doesn’t need to know all the things he’s said to me. But she knows I don’t like him. She knows he’s a bad guy. And she knows, too, that if he ever comes into my regular shop when she’s at the counter, she needs to find someone else—Kenji or me—to deal with him.
“But thanks to him, I get a pinball room, and a movie theater, and a pool for almost two months,” Amanda says.
My sister might be the most adaptable person I’ve ever known. It comes from the harshest kind of necessity, but she is, after all, forged from the fire.
But perhaps I am too, and maybe I’m not so bad at setting an example of how to step up for your family. “Then later this week let’s move into my temporary husband’s rich brother’s mansion.”
31
UNDER ONE CONDITION
Gage
“And in this room, my uncle Zane has a popcorn machine,” Eliza says, going full tour guide as she tugs Amanda by the hand down the hallway on the garden level that leads to the home movie theater.
