Even as I scrambled, Brand, being Brand, kept talking and when he did, he gave me the remaining puzzle pieces as to why Kara and her Mom didn’t get on and why Kara attached herself to his hip when she was around Creed.
“Kara says Dad’s the best guy on earth and I agree. Totally. Only the best girl for the best guy, she says. She says she wasn’t surprised when she met you because you’re like Dad, cool and pretty but fun.” He shot another grin at me. “Dad can be kinda strict.”
“Uh…” I mumbled.
Brand kept talking.
“Mom’s cool too, I think. Kara and her, though…” he shrugged and looked away. “I like Van but Kara says he’s no Dad. He isn’t but he’s okay. I like him but I think he tries too hard with Kara and that’s kinda lame. I mean, he should be with her like he is with me, you know, natural-like.” He shook his head. “But he isn’t.”
Van, obviously Chelle’s husband, wasn’t with Kara like he was with Brand, I suspected, because Brand liked him and he didn’t have to try.
Brand continued blabbing.
“Kara says a woman like Mom gets a man like Van and a woman like you catches the eye of a man like Dad. She says it’s going to be totally awesome when we move in with you guys because we’ll be cool just like you. I love her but Mom and Van aren’t cool. Mom and Van are, like, totally normal.”
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
Brand wasn’t done.
“Kara blames Mom for Dad leaving. She always did, you know. I didn’t get it but after we met you and she explained it, I did. Mom couldn’t hold him because Mom wasn’t you. I miss him but Kara, she like, really misses him. She’s a pain but she’s my sister and it kinda hurts to watch.”
And there it was.
Kara blamed Chelle for Creed leaving.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit!
“She’s a whole lot better now,” Brand finished.
Shit.
Well, I guessed I couldn’t ease my way into being a part of the family. Not with these people. They were sucking me into the big stuff right away. All of them.
Crap.
“Brand,” I called.
“Yeah,” he answered.
“Look at me, would you?”
He looked at me.
I took in a breath.
Then I laid it out.
“I gotta tell you, straight out, that I gotta talk to your Dad about what you just told me.”
His head tipped to the side. “Why?”
“’Cause I’m not real sure how you and Kara think it’s gonna go is how it’s gonna go.”
He looked a little confused and a little scared as he studied me. “Are you and Dad not, like, hooked up? I mean, are you not the Sylvie from his back? Before we met you, he told us your name and he told us that he’d known you from a long time ago, so we just figured you were that Sylvie.”