tissue did she realize she was crying, and that his arm had slipped around her shoulders.
“How do we do this?” she whispered, overwhelmed. “How do we bear the unbearable?”
“Sometimes we don’t,” he said simply. “Sometimes we just breathe.”
“I’m not staying home to make a cake,” Cameron said, nearly stepping on Miss Buzzy Bee on his way to the refrigerator. He resisted the urge to send the pull-toy out the door with a soccer kick.
“It’s Ashley’s birthday,” Lily said, tying on one of his mom’s aprons. It was the one with the picture of Glinda and the caption, “Are you a good witch or a bad witch?” Cameron could perfectly picture his mom wearing it, and the sight of it pissed him off.
“It’s not her birthday. Let’s pick another day.” Cameron felt the air pressing in on him. It wasn’t enough that he’d been dragged out of bed to visit Grandma Dot, that he’d played miniature golf. Now they wanted him to have dinner and a birthday party?
“We picked today,” Sean said, coming into the kitchen with Ashley held like a football under one arm. “Kid’s got to turn two one of these days.”
“She’s already two, and it doesn’t matter when she gets her stupid party.”
“It matters,” Sean said simply.
Cameron felt a slow burn of anger. Everything pissed him off—the sound of the radio clicking on in the morning, reminding him that he had to face another day without his parents. The sight of his mom’s handwriting on the kitchen chalkboard. The smell of her hairspray on the headrest of her favorite chair. And then there was Sean, with his dumb simple statements—It matters—that were supposed to make sense. “I wish you’d quit acting like we’re a regular family,” he said.
“Is that what I’m doing?” Sean said. “What the hell’s a regular family, anyway? Maybe you can explain it to me.”
“Sean—” Lily cast a worried look at the baby, but she had discovered Miss Buzzy Bee and was in another world. Elsewhere in the house, a TV blared—Charlie, watching cartoons.
“I mean it,” he said. “I want Cam to enlighten me. What’s a regular family? Mom, Dad, two-point-five kids? Who has that anymore? Does anyone?”
“You know what I mean,” Cameron snapped back. “A regular family doesn’t have two dead parents and a ‘Remembering Derek Holloway’ special on ESPN.”
“Here, Cam.” Ashley waddled over and handed him a package of balloons. “Do it.”
He ripped open the plastic package and blew up a red balloon, filling it in about three big huffs. Ashley’s eyes shone with admiration as she watched him. He tied a knot in the balloon and let it float to her. “Ah,” she said, delighted. “’Nother one.”
She was the one person in the world he couldn’t say no to. She had him blowing up balloon after balloon until she was swimming in a sea of them. While Cameron made himself dizzy blowing up balloons, he wished he could push the deadweight of fear out of his lungs. Now that he’d lost his parents, he was scared that those left behind might have to become a new kind of family. And even more scared that they might not.
Lily reached over, switched on the radio and found an oldies station playing “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” She and Sean worked together, their movements slightly rhythmic as they followed his mom’s recipe. “A few weeks ago, you could only do Pop-Tarts,” she said to Sean. “You’re a quick study.”
“In all things,” he assured her. “My goal is to make Charlie red, white and blue pancakes for the Fourth of July.”
“Ambitious,” she said.
There was a kind of rhythm in their conversation, too. They weren’t exactly flirting, but they had a peculiar ease and flow going on between them.
“Yeah?” Sean lifted a bowl of pink batter and poured it into a cake pan. “Maybe you’ll think of me when you’re spending the summer in Italy.”
“Who told you I was doing that?” Her spine stiffened.
“Charlie, I guess. Is it some big secret?”
“No, of course not. It’s just…I canceled the trip.”
“Why?”
She shot a glance over her shoulder. Cameron kept blowing up balloons, acting totally preoccupied with the baby. “I should think that would be obvious,” Lily said. “I wouldn’t feel right going away now, or even six weeks from now.”
While he held the bowl, she scraped it down with a spatula. “Because you think I’m doing a bad job,” Sean said.
Whoa, thought Cameron. The rhythm had changed. At the same time, he took a perverse satisfaction in the idea