I’ve got about thirty pounds on him, he’s quick and can hold his own in a fight. Even against me. I need him to know I am still the boss, despite what he might think. Left to his own devices, he’s the loose cannon that will blow this whole thing wide open.
I hold him pinned against the wall another second while I give him a look that is meant to relay just how goddamn serious I am, then release him and slick back the damp hair from my face. “I’ll take the room with Sherm.”
“Then I call the bedroom downstairs,” Ulie says.
I push past them toward the stairs to the first floor, leaving them to fight it out. When I reach the bottom, I find Sherm curled up in the corner of the sofa and the TV on a stand in the corner playing some cartoon I’ve never seen before. Lee is in the kitchen.
“It looks like there are sheets and towels, and the kitchen’s stocked as far as dishes and stuff, but I’m going to have to make a grocery run,” she says when she sees me. “We passed a market in town.”
I move deeper into the room to a door past the stairs. It’s another bedroom, this one with a queen bed. Beyond that is a door into a laundry room that leads to a back entrance.
I watch the rain sheet down the window in the back door. “We’re going to be okay here, Lee.”
She steps up beside me in the doorway, lays a hand on my shoulder. “We are.”
I hate that I need to know she believes we can make this work. But if she does, then maybe I will.
I turn and catch her eyes flicking toward Sherm, the one thing all four of us have always agreed on. Sherm is the most important thing right now. We have to do whatever it takes to keep him safe.
“I’m going to register him for school tomorrow,” Lee says. “The sooner he gets settled in, the easier this is going to be.”
“What if he talks?”
She shoots another concerned glance his direction. “He’s barely opened his mouth since we left Chicago.”
Our pet name for our baby brother has always been motormouth, and he’s earned it. He even talks in his sleep. His current silence is deafening.
“But if he opens it to the wrong person?” I push.
She bites her upper lip. “I’ll talk to him again.”
A wave of some emotion that I don’t have the luxury to feel rolls over me. It takes me a second to recognize it’s homesickness—not for the Chicago we left, but for the home we lost when Mom died.
Every day, I think Lee looks more and more like how I remember Mom looking—long sandy brown hair that turns blond in the summer, a narrow face with high cheekbones, and big hazel eyes. Now I see Mom shining out of the maternal concern in her expression.
I pull the handful of rings from my pocket and hand them to Lee. “I don’t think we should wear these, but they weren’t something I could leave behind either.”
For a long second she stares at them, her wide eyes moistening. “They took these. How did you . . . ?”
“They slipped off the table into my pocket totally by accident,” I say with a wry smile.
She pulls mine from her palm and hands it back. “You should wear yours. I’ll get chains for the others. They can wear them around their necks if they want.”
I nod and slide the thick gold band on my right pinky finger. Where mine has a round topaz stone set in its center, hers has an emerald. The pair of ruby rings are Grant and Ulie’s, and the diamond is Sherm’s. We swore to wear them to remind us, but I’m not sure it worked. I nearly choke on the acid climbing up my throat when I close my eyes and see my mother’s face.
“What did you do to your hand?” Lee asks, snapping me back to the present.
I lift my hand, look at the gouged knuckles. “Scraped it.”
She gives me a look because Lee is the one person who’s always been able to read me. But she spares me having to explain it when she asks instead, “How’s the leg?”
“They said it was fine,” I say dismissively. The truth is, I’m constantly aware of it, not because of the pain, but because it’s a reminder of how close we came to losing this battle.