She scowls at their outbreak of outrage. “Come on now, you all know perfectly well they’re for our holiday calendar photoshoot.”
“No!”
“No way!”
“Over my dead body, lady!”
“That can be arranged, March.” She cuts him a look.
August leans in, giving her what I’m going to assume is his version of puppy eyes. “Mom, we stopped looking cute a decade ago. Now it’s just creepy. Like those photos you see on true crime shows. Where the family ends up having a human meat farm in their basement.”
“Seriously,” June grumps.
Margo colors, then taps a manicured red nail on the table. “I don’t care. I want a family photo. You’re all getting older and these times are precious.”
May makes a face. Discreetly, of course.
“But why does it have to be a staged one?” March demands. “We look like total boobs. Just get us all together and do a candid.”
“Oh, yes, a candid,” Margo huffs. “You try and corral this family into getting close enough to take one.”
June toys with the stem of her glass. “Doesn’t matter. Either way, I’ll look like an angry chipmunk.”
“August is the worst,” May says. “His eyes are always closed.”
“That’s me trying to will away the pain of picture taking.”
Margo shakes her head. “I don’t know what you all are complaining about. I look terrible in every picture. But I still want them.”
Until now, I’d been quietly watching them, enjoying the show. But the way they all start to complain about bad photo angles has me speaking without thought. “Oh, come on. You all are ridiculously attractive.”
A pause thumps into the room, and they all stare at me with varying levels of amused surprise.
My fork stops midway to my mouth as I look around at them. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know because I won’t believe it.”
August frowns at me like he can’t tell if he’s been somehow insulted. That wasn’t my intention. If I’m honest, it kind of slipped out. But it is the total truth: they’re the most attractive family I’ve ever come across.
Margo purses her lips as if she’s trying to figure out how to answer that and still appear humble, which makes me want to laugh just a little.
March, however, has no such humbleness and grins wide. “Well, of course we know. We got mirrors and everything.”
“Yeah,” May adds with a snort, “and we all know who preens in front of them.”
“You?”
“Not as much as you.” She waves her empty fork in his direction. “I’m surprised you don’t put gilded frames around your mirrors and ask them the eternal question—”
“How to successfully toss my little sister out the window without actually hurting her?”
“Ha. No, but you’re hilarious.”
March winks at her, grinning and unrepentant.
“March won’t ask who’s the fairest of them all,” June deadpans. “He already thinks he is.”
He shrugs. “Facts don’t lie.”
“Taste is subjective, brother.”
