As I said.
Children are terrifying and confounding, and I am clearly a terrible parent.
I rub my brow and suppress a sigh. The boys are generally funnier than this. Truly funny. Not obnoxiously funny. “Please don’t say any of that in front of your mother.”
They share a matching grin.
Little bastards are fucking with me.
Though they’re not wrong—I’m quite the disappointment in every way beyond giving my parents a new generation to pass their assets to when they kick the bucket so that their wealth can stay in the family without going to their embarrassingly useless failure of an only child.
“With your grandmother in the state she’s currently in—” I start, and instantly regret it.
Because both boys’ smiles have now fallen away and they’re sharing another look.
I should be pleased.
This look holds guilt, and theydidinconvenience Bea quite thoroughly a few days ago.
But I’ve held enough guilt in my lifetime for all of us, and I dislike making my boys feel it.
Even when they need to.
And especially knowing that watching Lana’s mother slip away is their first true experience with grief. Her father died before they were old enough to remember him.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” a feminine voice that I’ve been hearing in my sleep says from above us.
Bea Best leans out the window of her burger bus. Her light brown hair is hidden beneath a tie-dyed bandanna that matches her tie-dyedBest Burger BusT-shirt. Sweat glistens on her forehead, which she wipes away with her forearm as her green eyes dart amongst the six of us.
I shake away the melancholy and give her my brightest smile. “Bea. You’re here. Lovely day for a burger in the park. I’d like to introduce you to my children. This is Eddie, and this is Charlie, and they have something they’d like to tell you.”
“Hello, Eddie and Charlie,” Bea says.
She doesn’t addnice to meet you.
That’s very distinctly missing.
“Hello, miss.” Charlie squints at her. “You know the United States has laws against false advertising.”
Eddie pokes him.
Charlie elbows him back.
I put a hand on each of their heads and separate them as I step between them. “That’s not what we discussed that you would say.”
“We don’t want to say what we discussed,” Charlie mutters.
“We would’ve told you about the party, but you were too busy with meetings and dinners and phone calls, and then you wouldn’t listen to us when we tried to tell you on Saturday,” Eddie adds. “You just saidstop arguing and go on with your mother now.”
So I’m to be thrown under the bus.
Specifically, this burger bus. “I wasnot—ahem. Please apologize to Ms. Best. You had ample opportunity to ensure her visit could’ve gone off without a hitch, and she was rather inconvenienced by your actions. Or your inactions, as it were.”
“Her socials thanked the community for their overwhelming support.” Eddie flashes his phone at me, showing me a picture of the burger bus on an app I’m unfamiliar with, where the posthas garnered two likes and apparently a single comment, which seems to have come from one of her brothers.
Charlie nods on my other side, which I can feel because my hand is still on his head. “That’s code forwe got a lot of tips and made more money than we would’ve if I hadn’t been thrown in jail.”
“When did you get social media? Your mother doesn’t want you on social media. It’ll rot your brains.”
