What little contact I had with them I owed to Veronica. She held the family together, even after my father died.
I should bring her flowers. And wine.
It wouldn’t make up for the years of neglect, but it was a start.
My laughter echoed off the dull gray walls of my bare, temporary office in the Capital Investment Advisors building.
I know more about my siblings than they’d be comfortable with.What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. Keeping tabs on them was my fucked up way of loving them from a distance.
My fortieth birthday wasn’t far off, and I realized I felt alone. My whole life had revolved around work, but it no longer fulfilled me like it used to. Time to stop pretending I didn’t need a family and get to know them in real life by forging genuine relationships, rather than observing from a distance and building files.
I have five adult siblings to get to know.I felt less lonely just thinking about it.
The reminder on my calendar warned me I had ninety minutes to get to Laurel Springs, barely enough time considering I needed to stop for flowers and wine.
Before closing my laptop, I checked the progress on the digital aging app.
A lion’s roar greeted me when I pressed Veronica’s doorbell.
“Who the hell rings the bell for family dinner?” Cassie asked as the door swung open. “Oh.” Her eyes grew two sizes bigger. She turned and yelled into the house. “It’s only Austin.”
“Hi Cassandra.”
“It’s Cassie.” She mumbled, “You should’ve left the stick you keep up your ass at the office.”
“Well, don’t just stand there letting the heat in, come inside,” Veronica yelled as she approached from the kitchen.
“Veronica, thank you for having me,” I said, handing her the rainbow bouquet.
“Everyone calls me Roni,” Veronica reminded me before sniffing the flowers. “Veronica is too formal.”
Like me. Too formal. Too quiet. Too distant.
Unlike my siblings, warm and fuzzy didn’t suit me.
“Hello Bryce.”
“Christ, could you sound less human?” Bryce asked.
“Leave him alone, copper,” Eva defended me as she came in for a shy hug. Her long, shiny black hair, pulled back into high pig-tails tickled my arms. Eva, who insisted we pronounce her name Ava, had changed the most over the years. The plain girl who’d blended in during elementary school had blossomed into a colorful artist who loved to stand out.
At least that’s the impression she gave. Eva dressed like a happy goth but kept mostly to herself, at least that’s what Bryce said, and only came out of her shell with family.
Unlike previous visits, I hugged back, squeezing until she complained about the wine bottles bruising her.
“Are you still working for John?” I asked, knowing she wasn’t.
“Nah, Meg returned to work, so I was deemed superfluous.”
When my brain flashed through the details from Meg’s file like a slideshow in my mind, I hit the stop button. I wanted to reconnect with my family, and remembering all the details about my cousin’s wife wasn’t the way to do it.
“Do you miss it?”God,I suck at small talk.
“Shockingly, yes. Even if the job itself was humdrum.”
“Superfluous? Humdrum?”
“Eva loves using fancy old words,” Cassie explained.
