Page 75 of The Fake Out

“About eighty acres,” Chris said.

“Did you grow up here?”

He shook his head. “I grew up just outside Oklahoma City. My dad grew up around here and always wanted to come back, but five kids made that hard.”

“Plus a sick baby,” I murmured.

“When Millie was older and needed the doctors less and I could help them, we all picked this together.” Finally, he turned down a driveway, each side lined with bright white and pink crape myrtles against a wooden fence.

“You bought it for them?”

“It wasn’t charity,” he clarified. “They sacrificed a lot for me. Hours of driving me to football practices and going to games. Visits to specialty doctors when I needed them, uniforms, being the team parent, putting up with other guys on the team, all that. I wanted to do it for them.”

I thought about Mama and how I wanted to give her everything so her life could be easier. “I get it.”

We passed by a banner hung between two fence posts. Someone had painted crudely, but clearly, in giant letters: WELCOME HOME, ELMER.

“Who’s Elmer?” I asked, pointing as we passed.

Chris grunted. “No one.”

I would have grilled him on that more because I could tell he knew exactly who Elmer was, but we turned a bend in the road and there it was. Two stories with a wraparound porch, the red-brick house was surrounded by flowerbeds bursting with color. An enormous oak tree stood in the front with a swing dangling from a branch.

A white picket fence surrounded it all behind which three dogs barked with excitement as we drove right by.

“Wait. Isn’t that the house?” I asked.

“That’s my parents’ house. Mine is back here.” He drove around another bend to reveal a much smaller one-story house.

“Oh.” I frowned. “I guess I assumed you had an apartment or something on your own.”

“This works out pretty well.” He pulled the truck in front of a small, detached garage. “I get my own privacy but I’m still around.”

“Sooo.” I twisted my hands in my lap. “Exactly where am I staying?”

Instead of answering, he hopped out of the truck and rounded it to open my door. “Oh, I have bunk beds. Since you’re the guest, I’ll let you have the top bunk.”

I glared at him. “You are a twelve-year-old boy in a man’s body, you know that?”

With a grin, he took a step back and held out a hand. “Fine. You can have the second bedroom.”

“Chrisss,” a voice yelled. A blurry figure raced across the football field-sized lawn between the houses, a dog following closely. A dark ponytail passed me without slowing as its owner threw herself in Chris’s arms.

“Whoa,” he said, but caught her up in a hug easily enough. When he set her down, he was laughing.

She looked about the same age as Iris, and that was where the similarities ended. This girl with the bouncy ponytail and twinkly eyes (like Chris) gave off big Sunshine Energy (also like her brother).

“Aggie, this is Mae,” Chris said.

Aggie bounced over and threw her arms around me. “I can’t believe you’re here. He’s not shut up about you.” She took a step back and picked up a piece of my hair. “Your hair is gorgeous. The pictures online do not do it justice.”

I smiled because it was hard not to smile around her, that much was obvious. “It’s nice to meet you. Are you the one who likes to keep his Wikipedia page up to date?”

With a grin so much like her brother’s it was almost disconcerting, she linked arms with me. “I see you know my work. I have so many more things I could tell you. I have photos. I have video.”

“You know, I’m your favorite brother, right.” Chris called from behind us.

Ignoring him, Aggie pulled me toward the house, talking slightly slower than the speed of light. “Now, let’s go meet everyone else. Mom wanted to play it cool, so she sent me over.”