We Don't Talk Anymore (The Don't Duet #1) - Julie Johnson Page 0,21

She’s one of the kindest people I’ve ever met. Since I was small, she’s been as much as mother to me as she is to her sons — always making sure I’m well fed and in bed at reasonable hour, never letting me out of her sight without a kind word or a pat on the cheek.

I flinch whenever my parents refer to her as our housekeeper or her husband, Miguel, as our handyman. To me, they’re family. Far more than the distant cousins who live clear across the country and only show up for occasional, obligatory holiday visits.

Sometimes, I feel closer to Flora and Miguel than I do my own parents. Not that I’d ever say that out loud. Mom and Dad are good people. They do love me; that’s never been in question. But they love their careers, too. I respect them for how hard they work — even more so when I consider the fact that they could’ve lived more than comfortably on the mere interest earned by my father’s inheritance.

Most trust fund kids want to party their way across the world; very few use their money for something as noble as a nonprofit that aims to save it. But that’s Vincent and Blair Valentine for you — solving global hunger one day, one dollar, at a time.

I don’t mean to sound flippant. I’m quite aware that the work they do is important. How many kinds can say their parents spend their days ending food insecurity in at-risk populations across the globe?

The company they co-run, VALENT, is more than a profession; it’s a calling. It’s their second child. (Perhaps their favorite child.) Still, when they’re home, I never want for affection or attention. They’re invested in my life. They want to know how I’m keeping busy, to see my recent report cards, to take the boat out for a spin around the Misery Islands. It’s just…

They’re not actually home all that often.

Between speaking engagements and business trips and funding meetings and site visits to each of their many aid distribution centers… they’re never here more than a handful of days out of every month. Rarely on the same schedule twice.

There is only one day out of the entire year I can count on their presence with any sort of certainty. One day I know they are guaranteed to be here when my eyes open in the morning.

June 5.

My birthday.

The Valentine family doesn’t ascribe to many traditions or even celebrate every holiday together — “Starvation doesn’t take a vacation, Josephine,” Mom told me over a grainy video-chat last Thanksgiving, her satellite connection spotty in the Sudanese desert — but we do have June 5.

At eight on the dot on the anniversary of my birth, the opening strains of the song “Josephine” begin blasting through the house. Every speaker. Top volume. I race out of bed, fly down the stairs, and find my parents waiting predictably in the kitchen with a stack of blueberry pancakes almost as high as the stack of presents on the table.

I don’t even care that most of the gifts were picked out by executive assistants I’ve never met. I live for that day. I spend all year waiting for it. Mom and Dad. Home. Together. In the same, actual room. At the same, actual time.

I don’t doubt, if they could, they’d be with me more frequently. They’d want to see every new design in my sketchbook. They’d cook me dinner twice a week and we’d eat together, at a table, like a real family. They’d ask typical parental questions — about my homework, about my crushes, about my favorite teachers at school. They’d wonder why I prefer the vintage sewing machine Archer bought me from a consignment shop over the shiny new one they had delivered via courier last Christmas.

But… those things… they seem so insignificant compared to their work at VALENT. And even if I miss my parents, even if I’m lonely sometimes… I’m not alone.

Not really.

Though it certainly isn’t in their job description, the Reyeses took me firmly under their wing. They’ve never made me feel like an obligation. Or even like what I am — a ward they’re paid to watch over. I’ve been their surrogate daughter since the very start.

It was Miguel who held my handlebars and taught me how to ride a bike — Archer pedaling like a Tour de France racer by my side, his own training wheels removed weeks prior; Jaxon already halfway to the front gates,