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No one aside from Natalia knows the full extent of how bad things can get with Yuliana’s tantrums. Lana has looked down on my life choices enough that I don’t need her looking down on my daughter, too.
“What are you two talking about?” Dad asks. “The old man can’t hear you.”
“Maybe it wasn’t meant for your ears, dear.” My dad’s wife, Pat, is a quiet woman. It’s difficult to imagine how he could go from being married to someone so loud and brash as my mom and then end up with someone as soft-spoken and considerate as Pat.
Or maybe it makes perfect sense. The extroverted woman cheated on him and destroyed his family. Throwing his lot in with someone like Pat was probably a safer bet.
“We’re family. Family doesn’t have secrets,” he protests.
“Yeah,” Alexis agrees, playfully narrowing her eyes at us. “No secrets!”
“We were talking about how the kids are liking school,” Lana fills in.
Dad turns to the grandkids. “How is school going?”
“Terrible,” Lily complains.
“Come on, there has to be a good part.”
“Recess,” she shrugs. “That’s it.”
Brady sits up tall. “I like science.”
“You have to like more than recess,” Dad says, responding to Lily. Brady sags down in his chair. He and Lily are twins, but she’s always been the attention getter between the two of them. “What about art class? Do they still have physical education?”
“P.E.,” Lana explains when Lily turns to her with a blank expression.
Lily wrinkles her nose. “P.E. is the worst. The boys get mad if I’m faster than they are, and Coach Darnum never lets me be captain to pick teams.”
“Because you just pick your friends and it makes the teams unfair,” Brady grumbles.
“Well, that doesn’t seem fair,” Dad says. “Everyone should get a turn at being captain.”
“She’s had plenty of turns. I’ve never been captain,” Brady says.
He’s essentially talking into a void right now. Dad is focused on Lily. Yuliana and Brady may as well not even exist.
“What’s a captain?” Yuliana whispers to Brady.
He explains it to her without teasing her for not knowing, and my heart swells. Meanwhile, Dad and Lily have moved on to talking about her favorite sports.
“I’m going to go out for softball when I get older,” Lily announces. “Right now, I’m on a coach pitch team, but as soon as I can, I’m going to be a pitcher.”
“You’ll have to practice a lot. We can go toss a ball around after dinner. I have one around here somewhere.”
Lily’s eyes widen. “Really?”
“Sure,” he says. “Brady, what about you? Do you have your mitt with you?”
Lana snorts softly. “He thinks this is the 1950s. Like kids still carry baseball mitts around with them in their back pockets.”
Even if it was still the 1950s, Brady wouldn’t have a baseball mitt on hand. He is the least sports-oriented kid I’ve ever met.
“Oh, um… no.” Brady looks down in his lap. “I didn’t—I don’t have one. I don’t really like—”
“Brady likes science,” I burst in, unable to contain myself. “You didn’t hear him, but he said that earlier. Sports aren’t really his thing. Right, bud?”
“You probably just haven’t found the right game. Every boy loves sports,” Dad says.
