“That isnotthe saying.”
“Mmm. Pretty sure it is.”
There was a small stack of brightly colored envelopes on the kitchen counter. Caela glanced at them, spotting the names of a few of her dad’s friends and her grandparents in the return addresses. He must have seen her looking, because he gave Caela an apologetic look as he stepped past her to fill his coffee mug.
“She didn’t send one, honey. I’m sorry.”
“Not surprising.”
“She probably just lost track of the day,” he offered. “Maybe it’ll come later this week.”
“Along with the cards for the last two birthdays she forgot?”
He grimaced and didn’t answer.
Caela had stopped expecting anything from her mother a long time ago.
She was five years old when she first understood that, though she was never cruel, her mother hadn’t really wanted kids. She and Caela’s dad had been young—barely twenty and halfway through their junior year of college—and had only been dating for a few months when she got pregnant. To say Caela had been unplanned would be an understatement.
“Ahappy surprise,” her parents would call her. And while she thought her dad meant it, Caela somehow knew her mother hadn’t. Maybe there was a time when she almost believed it, but by the time Caela started kindergarten, that delusion had passed.
Her mother was neverawfulto her. She was just … distant and, on occasion, irritable. Her dad was the one who helped her with her homework and took her to T-ball practice, the one who read stories to her before bed and sent her to time-out when she misbehaved. He was the good guy and the bad guy, all in one. And her mother was justthere. Distracted, disinterested, only chiming in when asked.
She left when Caela was nine, moving down to Kentucky with a whole host of unkept promises. Absence, it seemed, had not made her mother’s heart grow fonder.
And yet, while Caela had stopped expecting anything from her mother, she hadn’t quite stopped hoping.
“Are we going to the BMV today?” Caela asked, eager to change the subject so that her dad would stop looking at her with that sad, apologetic expression he always wore when her mother came up.
“Not today. I have to work one of those extra shifts I told you about.”
Caelalet out a loud, pointed sigh.
“We’ll go tomorrow,” he assured her. “The car will still be there. I can’t believe you’re so excited to drive that beat-up old thing.”
“Hey.” Caela turned away from the cabinet with the pancake mix pointed at him. “Thatbeat-up old thingis Jennette. Put some respect on her name.”
“Oh, my apologies.Jennettewill be there tomorrow, once you have your license.”
“Fine,” Caela said as she started making the pancakes. “But we’re going first thing in the morning.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He didn’t have to work for a few hours, though, which meant they had enough time after breakfast to engage in one of their favorite weekend rituals.
“All right. So what is this one about?” her dad asked as he settled onto the massive red couch in the living room.
“A group of adult orphans who are best friends.”
“Okay. Doesn’t sound too bad so far.”
“They do martial arts and are in a rock band where they sing about being best friends and doing martial arts.”
“Ah.”
“No,wait! It gets better!” Caela flopped onto the cushion beside him and hit the play button on the remote. “They have to fight drug-dealing, motorcycle-riding ninjas. Also it all takes place in Florida.”
“Of course it does.” He sighed. “I swear, Caela, I don’t know where you find these terrible movies.”
