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And now Amy…
“You girls want pancakes?” Dad asks, opening one of the cabinets for a box of Bisquick.
“Only if they’re chocolate chip,” Kira says.
“This is how I know you’re my daughter,” he says, wrapping an arm around her and giving her a side hug. “What about you, Dana?”
I look down at the steam coming out of my coffee, which is less and less as it cools. “Huh?”
Dad eyes me for a second. “Chocolate chip for Kira, blueberry for Dana.”
I try to smile. “Thanks.”
Kira comes to sit at the island with me, one of her eyebrows cocked upward as if to ask,Are you okay?
I nod.
She knows I’m lying. But she doesn’t push it. That’s the Kira way. Whereas I tease everyone’s feelings out of them so they won’t keep them bottled up, Kira waits for people to open themselves up to her. Two sides of the same coin.
“And then there were two, huh?” Dad calls out as he pours milk into a bowl of Bisquick.
“I could text Amy,” Kira says. “She’d come over.”
“Oh, no, no. Don’t do that.” Dad props the bowl on his hip and stirs it like he’s a perfect fifties housewife. “You girls are all growing up. That’s the way it should be,” he says with a wistful smile.
I smile back. Dad knows that, eventually, he’ll be left all alone in the big house. Must be a scary thought. I’m scared for him too. “Maybe I should move back in,” I say as casually as I can. After all, it’s not like I’ve got anyone waiting at home for me.
Kira does a doubletake. “What?!”
“No!” Dad says simultaneously.
I cross my arms over my chest. “Damn, tell me how youreallyfeel.”
“I mean, we’d love to have you, Dana. If that’s what you need,” Dad starts explaining. “But you’ve got your own life.”
I sigh. “Do I, though?”
“Of course you do!” he replies. “You’ve got the practice and…and…”
I narrow my eyes. He can’t even name a second thing. Yeah, I’m officially pathetic.
“You’ve got Drew,” Kira says with a sly smile.
“Why are you saying it like that?” I ask. We’ve had this interaction at least four dozen times at this point.
Kira scoffs. “Don’t act like–”
“Nothing is happening,” I hiss. “Drop it.”
Drew and I have been friends for a few years now. He used to be my client in grief counseling and then, when he felt he’d reached closure after his mother’s death, he left…then came back a week later with an extra ticket to a Dodgers game that he then invited me to. As a long-suffering baseball fan, how could I refuse?
It was not a date and has never and will never be romantic.
Even if I want it to be.
“Dana, it’s sweet of you to offer, but you’ve already done so much for our family. You’re our rock. I couldn’t ask you to do any more than you already have,” Dad explains, folding a bag of chocolate chips into the batter.
I guess I do have that to be proud of. I’m a good big sister and daughter. A great one.
