“Need help?” I ask, desperation lacing my tone.
“Nope! Go sit down. That’s how you can all help,” Oma says, shooing us out of the kitchen.
Within minutes, we are all seated around the dining table. Julia is on one side of me and Parker on the other.
When the bowl of scrambled eggs ends up right in front of me, I bump my shoulder against Julia’s. “Eggs? They’re only scrambled—not an omelet.”
She chuckles softly. “Doesn’t matter. They look delicious.”
Which gets me thinking. I watch for a beat as she serves herself before sliding my chair back and standing up.
“Just a second. I’ll be right back,” I announce to the rest of the table before striding out of the glassed-in dining room toward the old farmhouse kitchen. I head straight for the pantry, swipe what I need off the shelf, and return to the dining room. Back in my seat, I pop the tab and pull the lid off a can of pineapple chunks before shoving a small spoon into it.
I can sense my family staring at me in confusion. But more importantly, I see Julia’s smile out of the corner of my eye as I serve myself up a few spoonfuls of pineapple right on top of my eggs.
When I finally turn to her, I slide the can in her direction. “Pineapple?” I ask with a teasing wink.
Her smile widens as she hits me with a chuckle. “Yes, please. So thoughtful of you.”
I garnish her eggs, too, trying not to feed into my family’s stunned silence as I set the can back on the table.
“What the hell are you doing?” Opa grumbles.
“Acquiring a taste,” I say as I shovel a mouthful past my lips and cast a quick glance at Julia. Her cheeks are pink. She’s fucking beautiful. But I don’t gawk this time. Instead, I look back down at my plate and announce, “Pineapple on my eggs. It’s a new thing I’m into.”
“Weird. But I’ll try it,” Opa says, gesturing for me to pass the can across the table. Laughter ripples through the table as everyone joins in on trying the wacky combination.
But it’s Parker’s attention beside me that I feel most heavily. She hums thoughtfully as she watches me take another big bite, and when she elbows me this time, it’s downright gentle.
“You know, it’s notherheart I’m worried about.”
Parker
Crawl space.
Emmett
Be right there.
When Parker summons me to the crawl space later that day, I show up. It’s our thing, always has been. When I was eleven, she went missing for a few hours. Oma and Opa were beside themselves with worry, and they’d organized a search party to look for her.
But I’m the one who found her. We were told to stay in the house, so I’d come downstairs to play at the pool table, needing a distraction. As I racked the balls, I heard her quiet sobbing behind the wall.
I opened the small, low door, and that’s where I found her. In the crawl space, alone. She said she needed everyone to stop coddling her, just wanted to be sad without people rushing in to make her feel better.
And quite frankly, I could relate.
So I crawled in beside her, and we sat in silence. Tears on our cheeks. Which, in retrospect, was unfair to all the people who were walking the fields and calling her name. But Parker and I have been kindred in that way. We’re the quiet ones.
And while I love all my siblings dearly, Parker and I are the closest.
Plus, it’s a great excuse to avoid the cameras, whose presence weighs heavier every time I walk through the front door of my home and remember that I’m being watched. In fact, when I went back to change, I couldn’t help but notice crew members affixing even more cameras to nearby trees and fence posts. It seems my great escape has bought me more surveillance.
Which is why I pull straight up to the main farmhouse, leaving my groceries in the back seat, let myself in, and make my way straight to the basement. I walk past the antique pool table, eyes homing in on the small door that blends in with the dark, wood-paneled walls. My lips twitch as I wonder what I’m heading into right now.
In the past, it’s been a horrible breakup, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas Day, hell, even her own birthday. When Parker has big emotions, she still hides here. But now the space has grown up too.
Rugs cover the dirt floor. There’s a stack of old-school mystery novels. A flashlight. Pillows propped along the pink insulation and plastic sheet walls. There’s even a basket stocked with a few different liquors for when shit is really bad.
