“Including you and Mom when you tell me to clean up the mess I made tonight?”
I grinned. “Nah, kiddo, that’s the kind of thing youhaveto listen to. Nice try.”
“No fair!”
“Definitely not.Butit’s character building. Or so they say.”
“Is this Freud’s idea too?”
“Maybe. He came up with some whacko notions.”
“He sure did.” I almost gagged when she wrote “Shay” in the flour dusting the counter but didn’t hide my grimace as she drew a bunch of hearts around his name too. “Do boys do that, then?”
“Do what?”
“Make girls do stuff they don’t want to?”
I often came face-to-face with how great a job Star had done on this kid. With her fucked-up background, Star had had her work cut out for her.Like always, she’d knocked it out of the freakin’ park.
“They do. And you don’t let them. If anyone ever tries, you tell your mom or me and we’ll sort it out.” I prodded the wooden spoon in the air. “We don’t care if you were doing something we told you not to. If the circumstances will get you grounded. You tell us if anyone pressures you to do anything and we’ll fix it.
“We can’t fix what we don’t know, and I’d prefer for you to come to either one of us first. There’ll be stuff you’ll want to do as you get older. Sneak out of the apartment to go to a club or some other dumb stunt, and it’ll put you in danger—that’s why if you asked us, we’d say no. But we’re not totally ancient. We understand that some things are a rite of passage… not that your mother would like you to believe that.
“Don’t let sneaking out stop you from standing your groundorfrom coming to us if you’re in trouble. You will always be safe with us. Understood?”
Pursing her lips, she nodded. “And I won’t be grounded?”
I knew I was making trouble for future Conor here… “No. Your safety isallthat matters to us.”
That earned me another nod. “Dad?”
“Yes.”
“You know I love you, right?”
I shot her a shy smile. “I do. You know I love you too, yeah?”
“When you say stuff like that, I do.”
“Good.”
“Dad?”
“Yes?”
If my voice sounded wary, that was experience talking. I knew Star had gone through the birds and the goddamn bees a few times, and Kat had even asked questions when I was around, but fuck if I didn’t brace myself for a more in-depth convo tonight too.
“Will you help me with a school project?”
My shoulders sagged with relief. “Sure!”
She gnawed on the inside of her cheek. “It’s… I don’t want Mom to know about it.”
“Okay, fine. What is it?”
“We have to make a family tree as an end-of-year project. Shay and I have been working on it, but we hit a wall.”
I blew out a breath.
