I had trouble believing that I was about to tell my brother that I’d just become the legal guardian of our father’s child. He must have misread my incredulity for hesitance, because he sighed a little and said, “Do we have to play twenty questions every time something big happens with you?”
He was referring to the day I’d gone shuffling into his bedroom many years ago, my head low and my gaze averted. He’d tried to coax my problem out of me, but my mortification had prevented it. So he’d resorted to twenty questions.
“Are you in trouble?”
“No.”
“Are you sick?”
“No.”
“Is someone we know in trouble or sick?”
“No.”
“Are you covered in hideous warts from the frog you had in your pocket last week?”
I rolled my eyes. “No.”
He looked at me more closely and I blushed. My body language said, I’m so embarrassed I’d be happy if the ground opened up and swallowed me, and it didn’t take long for Trey to figure it out.
“Are you . . . ?” He blushed a little. I had to love him for it. “Are you . . . a woman?”
I hit the floor and pulled the blanket off his bed to cover my head.
“You are?” He wasn’t supposed to sound so perky about it. He was supposed to get all awkward and kick me out of his room, then act weird around me for months and years.
I couldn’t breathe very well under the blanket and I had a bit of a claustrophobia problem too, so I didn’t dillydally any longer. “I don’t know how to buy the . . . stuff,” I said, hoping he could hear me through the knit fabric draped over my bruised pride.
“Go ask Mom.”
“She’s in the den with a box of Kleenex.” Which was code for “She’s curled up in a fetal position on the couch, sobbing into a cushion like we can’t hear her, and jumping out of her skin every time she thinks she hears Dad coming home.” Mom in that state was like a car without tires—it could still kinda move, if it had to, but you knew it really shouldn’t.
Trey had suspended every smidgen of male pride on that day and had walked with me to the Jewel-Osco on Cross and Willow. He’d shielded me with his body so nobody could see me reading the labels on the boxes of girl stuff I’d studiously ignored all my life, and then, seeing my nearly apoplectic shame, had boldly walked to the checkout and paid for my icky things himself.
I realized at that moment that the only way I would ever be able to pay Trey back for being my brother would be to buy an island in the Pacific, build him a palace on it, hire professional soccer players to populate it, and equip it with state-of-the-art Dad repellents. Since I couldn’t quite afford any of that yet, I just kept quiet on the walk home. I knew he appreciated that, too—though not as much as an island. What I really wanted to do was hold his hand and say thank you over and over again until I turned blue.
But it was a much different bit of news I had for Trey on this day, twenty-odd years later, and as we sat at the table in his cozy French bakery, I was once again at a loss for words.
“Question one: Are you in trouble?”
I laughed a little jaggedly. “You don’t have to twenty-questions it, Trey.”
“Oh, good. Just tell me who the guy is and I’ll take a baseball bat to his car.”
“I want you to know that I’ve finally made my decision about Shayla.”
I had his full attention. His gray-green gaze narrowed and he kinda squinted at me, waiting.
I went to the door and found Shayla and Dana playing hopscotch on the sidewalk. When I reentered L’Envie, Shayla was propped on my hip, her legs around my waist. I hadn’t really realized before then how convenient those hip bones were, and I wondered if there wasn’t a bit of genius in God’s design plan after all.
Trey stood as we approached, and his astonishment melted into a lopsided grin.
“This is Shayla, Trey,” I said.
“Shayla,” Trey said, as if testing the name’s flavor. He bent so his eyes were on a level with hers. “I’m Trey. And I’m going to be one of your favorite people. Seriously. You’ll be telling all your friends about me when you grow up.” He pulled