He’d gotten his hello pets and was now snuffling at Carina and Ren’s discarded shoes.
“Hey, Lee,” Ren said as he went to the fridge. He peered in and then closed the door. “Where’s Emilia?”
“She’s not back yet. Mamma’s not, either.”
Carina pushed Ren out of the way and opened the fridge herself. “There’s nothing to eat! Emilia’s supposed to be home when we are.”
Lia knew precisely what Carina was complaining about. She had very specific foods she liked, and they were out of what she wanted. One of Emilia’s errands today was the market.
But just now, Lia felt like the grownup in the room, so she played it like Carina was being a brat. And she was being a brat. It was her default setting. “I’m sorry, she’s not. She didn’t check in with me. There’s a ton of food in there, anyway, Carrie.”
Her baby sister slammed the fridge closed. “No food I want. Fine. I’ll have cookies.” She went to the jar on the counter and pulled the top off. Plucking four shortbreads for herself, she got four for Ren, too. “You want some?” she asked Lia.
Lia loved shortbread cookies. But she shook her head. “I had a big lunch.”
Carina snorted. “Yeah, right. I’m going upstairs. What’s for dinner?” She went to the little menu board on the wall, where Emilia always wrote out the dinner she and Mamma had planned. “Salmon. Gross.” The latest in her endless string of opinions delivered, she sauntered off, leaving her backpack in the mudroom. Carina got detention as much for not turning in assignments as for fighting and mouthing off.
Ren watched her go, snacking contemplatively on a cookie. His eyeliner was definitely smeared, but it looked almost intentional. And it made his blue eyes crazy intense.
“How was school, Rennie?”
He shrugged. “Like always. You want some milk?”
“No, thanks.”
Setting his cookies on a paper towel, he poured himself a glass of milk.
“What are you doing this afternoon?” Lia asked, feeling ridiculously lonely considering the chaos of Carina’s entrance and the fact that her brother was still standing in the room with her.
Another shrug. “Math homework, then get online, I guess.
“What game are you playing?”
“You wouldn’t know it.”
He was right. Video games had never interested her. Why pretend to be somebody else in a little electronic box when you could pretend to be somebody else on a stage instead?
“Could you teach me?” Why had she said that? She didn’t want to play one of his dumb games.
And Ren quite obviously didn’t want to teach her. His expression was positively aghast. “You … want to play with me? I … well …”
“Never mind. I don’t know why I asked. I don’t want to play.”
“Oh, okay.” He was so relieved he sighed. “Okay. I’m goin’ up.”
“See you for dinner, I guess.”
“Yeah, dinner.” He grabbed his pack and headed to the stairs.
Snuggles followed after him, the traitor, and left Lia completely alone.
~oOo~
Emilia was back from her errands about fifteen minutes after the kids had gone upstairs. Mamma came in while Emilia was making dinner. Papa was home in time to change out of his suit and eat with them, as he tried to do regularly.
If Lia had been two or three years younger, she might have thought it was a good night. But now there were gaping holes in her chest. One for Brown and her independence, one for the thought that her life would ever be what she wanted it to be, and one for Alex, who’d been wrapping himself around her heart all this time he’d been her bodyguard, and she hadn’t even realized it.
So she sat quietly and pushed food around her plate, taking enough bites to be seen eating, and then asked to be excused to her room. At least there, she was alone by choice.
Late that evening, Lia sat at her desk and tried to write. She’d never wanted to be a playwright or a novelist or anything like that, but now she thought maybe writing was one thing she could do from home and still feel like she was having a piece of what she wanted. She’d read enough plays to know their structure really well, and she had to have an ear for dialogue to act it out, so she’d decided to give writing a try.
It wasn’t going so well. It felt backward and … sticky. Or maybe rocky.
A knock on her door distracted her from thinking up words to describe its wrongness.