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He turned to look at his sister to see her response. “Good.”

“That’s all I hear also.”

“It is,” Bella argued. “It’s only been three weeks. There isn’t much going on. I’m doing my work.”

She always did.

She got good grades also. Better than him.

“I had to almost sit on Colson to get him to do his work on time.”

Bella laughed. “What else? What was Colson like in middle school?”

“No,” he said, shaking his head. “Don’t go there.”

“I have to. She asked.”

His mother was grinning like she was ready to spill every secret he had.

Thankfully, he didn’t have that many. “I was a good kid,” he said. “I never got in trouble.”

“You didn’t get caught,” his mother corrected.

Because he spent too much time listening to all the shit his father did and got stuck in his head that he didn’t want to get the label from that.

“Nope, but I didn’t do anything bad either.” He was staring hard at his mother to back him on this. It wasn’t a lie, but he didn’t want to go down a road that led to a conversation about his father.

“No, you didn’t. You were typical as a teen. Though you had a girlfriend for almost two years.”

“You had a girlfriend?” Bella asked, her jaw dropping. “You told me I can’t date until I’m sixteen.”

Not that Bella brought up a boy to him, but he’d thrown that out there last year when he heard giggling between Bella and one of her friends.

A friend that he hadn’t heard of lately and wondered what could have happened there.

But friends came and went in school.

Just like the friends she had when his father was alive, none of them were in Bella’s life now.

He didn’t care so much for those kids’ family life, nor their parents.

His father didn’t monitor nearly enough shit and often left Bella to be with who she wanted so he could be out drinking or picking up women.

Jesus, he’d never forget the night he got a call that his father was picked up for soliciting prostitution. Then to give his son’s name to get him off.

That was one of their worst fights ever.

Bella had been at someone’s house that night too.

“And you can’t,” he said firmly. “Why don’t you go in the other room while I help with dinner? This way I won’t burn it next time.”

Bella got up and moved out of the kitchen, and out of sight.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” his mother asked. “Get that puss off your face. She knows you’re not serious about the dating.”

“Yes, I am. Good lord, I barely handled the conversation I had with her earlier this week.”

“What’s that?” his mother asked, moving closer, the concern etched on her face.