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The Carter family was boisterous.
Not as boisterous as my own family, but boisterous all the same.
We walked into the Carter family home with the smell of fresh baked bread greeting us.
Nobody met us at the door, and Ande walked right in like that was all she ever did.
Privacy didn’t seem to exist in either family.
Noted.
“You made it early,” Mom said. “All your brothers are out back at the grill. Dad is on his putting green. Go on out there, Keene.”
“You don’t need any help?” I asked, worried.
“I catered everything but the bread.” She smiled. “I know my limits, and right now, cooking a meal for twelve… eleven…” Her eyes went really sad for a long moment. “Isn’t one of my capabilities.”
I gave her arm a squeeze, then gave Ande a kiss on the top of her head before heading out to the back yard.
I found all of the brothers not gathered around the grill, but at the bar that surrounded the grill.
Germaine and Garnett Carter had a huge family home about two miles east of Plano.
It was set in the woods slightly, and there was a very large back yard with quite the set up.
A huge pool, a covered patio with an outdoor kitchen made of dreams.
Then there was the putting green that Germaine was currently trying to get a small golf ball into the hole all the way across the yard.
“Wow,” I said as I took everything in. “This is quite an entertainment area.”
“Dad’s obsessed with making Mom happy. And Mom’s obsessed with entertaining. Their only squabble about this outdoor space was the putting green Dad wanted and Mom didn’t. Mom said that if he got it, he had to use it every single day. And he has, even though he hasn’t really wanted to,” Auden said.
I nodded as I leaned against the counter next to the grill. “That’s cool, I guess. I’ve never really done the golf thing before.”
“Why not, it’s fun?” Quaid asked.
I shrugged. “My dad didn’t allow us to do that kind of thing when we were younger. Then I went into the military, and golf never really became a hobby while I was doing that, either. Then I came back after I got out of the military and immediately started working with the circus and my sisters… and there was just never any time. Plus, I think you need to have some sort of control and patience to play golf… of which I have neither.”
There was silence, long and loud, and I looked toward the six of them to see them staring at me like I was a poor, pitiful creature they’d just been presented with.
I hated being looked at like I was pitiful. Ugh.
“Why are you all looking like that?” Ande asked as she came out onto the green, stopped next to the bright pink ball that Quincy’d been using, and kicked it across the green on purpose.
“Hey!” Quincy cried out. “I was winning!”
“You were cheating.” She rolled her eyes.
“Cheating is literally sometimes the only way that you can move forward in life,” he countered. “Which you would know, since you cheated all through high school.”
“I didn’t cheat!” she said. “That was Addison!”
They all laughed, and I had a feeling they knew something I didn’t.
“What am I missing here?” I asked.
Germaine brought his golf club down, and gently swung the club so that the ball would land into the hole about four feet from him.
