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“Uncle Shane is coming?” Izzy asks with the excitement of a child who’s innocent of all the multiple layers of bullshit and red tape that come with being an adult.
“He’s not your uncle,” Ruthie insists.
I glower at her.
She lifts her hands in a proclamation of innocence. “What? It’s true. My friends don’t go around asking her to call them uncle.”
“Uncle Tank does,” Izzy corrects her. “And Shane says I can call him uncle too. I don’t want to stop. I’ve only got one real uncle, Mom. Most people have at least a few and some aunts too.”
“Fine,” Ruthie mutters, even though it obviously costs her.
“You don’t like Shane?” Mira asks. I’m guessing she knows as much and is more interested in Ruthie’s reasons.
“They’ve always been like that,” I say. “I can’t remember them ever getting along. Even when Ruthie could barely talk. She used to pretend she was a dog and bite him.”
“Danny,” Ruthie growls. If she wanted to protest that she’s never pretended to be a dog, she didn’t pick a good way to do it.
I go ahead and point that out, and her response is to bare her teeth at me and snap. I grin, even if it feels like my stomach is full of snakes.
Burke. Shane. Lawyers.
“I don’t think Mom and Uncle Shane like sharing Uncle Danny,” Izzy says. “They always like to tell him what’s best for him, but sometimes they don’t agree.”
“That’s not it,” Ruthie says quickly. “I’m fine with sharing him, obviously. And he’s a grown man and can do what he likes. It’s just…Shane is infuriatingly full of himself. I mean, you’ve seen the way he wears suits every day, even on the weekends.”
“He works most weekends,” I point out.
“Oh, and you don’t think he’d wear them anyway?”
I shrug, because it’s an old argument, and I don’t particularly care why Shane enjoys wearing suits. I only know that I don’t. If there’s any practical use for a tie, I’ve yet to hear a good argument for it. I feel strangled enough by normal shirts, thank you very much.
“Mom, you’re not being nice,” Izzy says. “You always tell me people can wear whatever they like when I say someone has an ugly dress on. Or that Uncle Danny wears boring shirts.”
“You think this one’s boring?” I ask, raising my eyebrows at Mira.
“No, that’s the best shirt I’ve ever seen you wear,” Izzy says.
Mira’s lips twitch. I’m fine with giving her the win.
The waiter comes by with our food, which no one but Izzy seems to care much about just now. My mind is busy with Shane and Lucas Burke Senior, and also with Glitterati, which looms like a circus funhouse in my mind. I’ve never been there, but I’ve seen the photos. They look loud in a way a photo shouldn’t be able to.
Mira hasn’t said this, but I know another of her worries is that I’m not going to like her bar—that I’m going to reject this thing that’s a part of her. In all honesty, I’m concerned she’s right. There are very few bars that I actually like, and most of them have outdoor seating and three different beers on tap. The bars I like have an unfortunate habit of closing down, probably because I’m one of a handful of people who actually seeks these qualities out and finds them desirable.
But the one thing all those other bars didn’t have was her.
Wednesday.
I’m going Wednesday. When I get back from Glitterati, I expect she’ll have a quiz for me—short answer, because karma bites back and hard—and I can only hope I pass.
That’s what’s going through my mind when Shane bursts in through the door, wearing a suit, of course.
Ruthie waves a hand at him as if to say, “See? I told you. It’s Sunday morning, for goodness’ sake.”
“What if he was at church?” I mutter for the sake of argument.
She just gives me a flat look. Fair enough.
“Uncle Shane!” Izzy shouts.
