AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Aggie rested her elbow on the rail. “Don’t attribute the change to just one-on-one time. It’s who they’re with that counts too.”
“Tova’s only around until we leave. She deals with Grayson’s outbursts well.”
She playfully swatted me on the shoulder. “I was talking about you.”
“No. It’s not me.”
“Why?”
Not long ago, I wouldn’t have bared my insecurities to my sister, but things had changed in the last year. The answer to her question came easily. “They aren’t happy like this around me. I can’t talk to Grayson when he’s upset like she can.”
“Mm.” Aggie didn’t sound convinced. “How do you think Curtis and Lauri would do? Would they give him a stern lecture, or negotiate the terms of how and when he would stop crying?”
I gave her a frustrated glare, but I nearly laughed. Picturing my almost-retired lawyer in-laws pulling out a pen and contract to discuss terms of a meltdown was too easy to imagine. Same with the lecture.
“I tried lecturing because that’s what they’d do. It’s what Meg would’ve done.”
She didn’t respond immediately, her expression was contemplative, like she was deciding whether she should. “Meg was so confident and direct, it can be hard to consider that she wasn’t always right.”
“How so?” I asked sharply, the obligation to be defensive of Meg and her frank personality lingering inside me.
“You’re good with your kids. I don’t know why you don’t think you are.”
“I don’t think—” Herprove itexpression halted my denial. “I fucked up with you guys, didn’t I?”
Her mouth dropped. “How? We wouldn’t be who we are today without you.”
“You hardly talked to us for ten years—”
“I talked to you plenty.”
“—Wilder’s getting a divorce. Austen joined the military and left before the ink dried, and Eliot is terminally upset.”
“We all have our baggage. Imagine how we’d be if you hadn’t stepped in when Mama left.” She put a hand on her hip, not letting me deny my way out of the conversation. “Alcott Knight, you did not let your wife convince you that you couldn’t do a better job than her parents because she was so bitter about being stuck in Buffalo Gully.”
“She gave up a lot to be with me.”
“But she didn’t give up on herself like you’re doing.” She put a hand on my forearm. “Cody, Meg could’ve been the best supportive mom in the world, but she’s gone.Youmake the decisions based on the now.”
My throat worked as I tried to speak.
She squeezed, rooting me in the present. “I know you’re a man of your word, but in this case, it might not be best for you or the kids to keep it.” Her smile was encouraging. “You give some very helpful parental lectures yourself.”
Her teasing tone dislodged the rock in my throat. “I figured it was better than what Mama would do. Flutter around and commiserate about how this wasn’t what she wanted out of life.”
I had adopted a parenting style for my siblings, and I worried it had messed them up. Aggie’s insistence made me view the past, including my last conversations with Meg, with new eyes. Meg had been strong and stoic until the end, but she’d been scared. What if her worry had spilled over, making me rethink how I would—how the kids should—live without her?
As for Aggie, her gaze flickered like she was trying to recall the instances Mama would go off about how she’d been wronged in the game of life. Aggie was too young to remember the specifics of Mama’s presence. After Mama had left and before she’d died in a pointless car wreck of her own doing, she’d made it a point to save Aggie from the sort of domesticity she thought was hell. Aggie had sort of listened, minus the self-destructive lifestyle.
“I didn’t realize that’s what she did.”
I tossed a pointed look her way, grateful to have moved on from the topic of Meg. “It was usually you throwing a tantrum.”
“Was not.” Her lips twitched, fighting a smile. “Eliot and Austen, maybe.”
“Oh, they got on her nerves plenty.” Wilder had been a rigid, do-gooding prick since he left the womb. But he’d still been a Knight brother with three other brothers. “We all gave her gray hairs.”
“We’ll never know. She dyed her hair every month.”
