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I run my tongue over my teeth. I know I should keep quiet, but I’ve never been good at that. I guess I’ll always be my mother’s daughter.
“Not every boy, clearly.” I gesture to Brady, who ducks his chin. For as much as he wanted attention a second ago, the moment has passed. He’d like to blend back into the wallpaper now.
Yuliana perks up. “Is hula hooping a sport?”
Dad shakes his head. “No.”
She deflates slightly, and the defensive Mama Bear instincts in me come out to play. “Yes, it is. There are world championships for hula hooping.”
“There are world championships for video games, too. I saw it on the sports channel last weekend.” Dad snorts. “That doesn’t make it an athletic ability.”
I fight an eye roll and smile at Yuliana. “Hula hooping is totally a sport.”
“There’s no need to lie to her. She can like it without it being a sport,” Dad says. “Lily can show her how to play some real sports and she can choose one of those.”
“There’s no need to choose a favorite grandkid the same way you chose your favorite children!”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I regret them. Not because they aren’t true—they are. But because now is not the time to hash out the lifetime worth of resentment I still carry. Definitely not in front of the kids.
Dad’s brows pinch together, his expression flickering between surprise and anger. “I never chose favorites—”
“I just meant that everyone can like what they want,” I interrupt quickly. “There are lots of hobbies. The kids can all have different ones.”
“Of course they can,” he says. “I never said they couldn’t. But you can’t accuse me of—”
Lana reaches over and pats Dad’s shoulder. “No accusations were made. Rayne took it back. Right, Rayne?”
I look at my sister, and I can see the pleading in her eyes. She wants me to pull the plug on what I said, to stuff it back into the box it burst out of.Let’s tuck that away and never deal with it again.
“I’m sorry I said anything,” I say instead. “Let’s just have a nice dinner.”
That’s not the revocation anyone wanted. The tension in the room is thick. Forget a knife—we’d need a pickaxe to hack through it.
I don’t even try. I stay silent the rest of dinner.
* * *
In the kitchen afterward, I’m washing dishes in the sink when Lana moves next to me. “That was a real shit show.”
I sigh. “Sorry. I should have been better prepared to deal with comments like that from Dad.”
“I wasn’t talking about what Dad said. I was talking about what you said.” Lana turns to me, her hip pressed against the edge of the countertop. “You turned a tiny comment into this huge ordeal. It didn’t need to be that dramatic.”
I’m momentarily taken aback. I knew Lana would be annoyed at me for getting into it with Dad, but I never thought she’d say it was unjustified.
“He was ignoring Brady! Did you see your son’s face? He looked so upset that Dad only wanted to talk to Lily.”
“That’s my business,” she says. “I was going to talk to Brady about it later. If it was a big enough problem, I’d talk to Dad, too.”
“Ifit was a problem? You’d really let Dad ignore your kid?”
Lana blows out a frustrated breath. “He’s dying, Rayne.”
“I know that. Why the hell else do you think I’m here?”
“Because you’re running from something back at home?” she guesses. I try to keep my expression neutral, but she snaps her fingers and points at my face. “Yep. I’m right. Knew it.”
I pinch my eyes up tight. Curse my expressive face. “No, you aren’t. I’m here for Dad.”
