Only when the feeling returns to my ass, do I finally stalk up the small path that leads to the cream-colored mobile home in front of me. Navy blue shutters line the windows and a fresh coat of paint to match highlights the railing for the steps that lead to the front door.
Pulling open the screen door, I rap my knuckles against the solid one behind it. As it opens, my younger sister stands behind it, wearing confusion on her face.
“Uh— hi?” She laughs.
Irina stands nearly a foot shorter than me, with her hair dyed a soft ginger color and held in a bun tied at the top of her head. A towel is hung over her shoulder and flour is sprinkled all down the front of her.
Using my chin to gesture toward her clothing, I say, “Sorry to interrupt.”
Her hand drops onto her hip, her head cocking to the side as her fingers tap along the door frame.
“What are you running from?”
“I just rode for six hours,” I say with a sigh as I push my way past her and into the house. “Let me go pee before you start in on me.”
I haven’t been here in a long time – too long, probably. I should have made more of an effort to come see her in the past couple of years, but I’ve always made an excuse. It was too far, she didn’t need her big brother barging into her life, whatever she was doing was none of my business.
I’m lucky that she didn’t cut me off completely for never showing up.
Despite how long it’s been since my last visit, the inside of the house is nearly unchanged.
A soft microfiber couch still sits at the center of the living room, sandwiched on either end by two small end tables. The TV is in its same place on the small shelving unit that faces the couch. She still has those ridiculous cartoonish paintings that she loves so much hung on the walls.
Almost everything is exactly as I remember it, even my sister.
“Is Grady home?” I shout to her from the bathroom as I scrub soap against my palms.
“Nope,” she hollers. “You have no buffer between you and whatever it is you’re avoiding.”
With a humorless laugh, I make my way out to the kitchen, where Irina sits perched on a bar stool with her chin resting on her folded hands. An expectant eyebrow raises in my direction as I reach the opposite end of the counter, dropping my forearms onto its surface.
“What did you do?” She probes.
I heave a sigh, pushing my fingers through my hair.
“I slept with someone I shouldn’t have.”
Pulling in an exasperated breath, she leans back in her seat, crossing her arms over her chest. “That’s your MO, Connie,” she tells me. “That’s literally just what you do.”
“Not like this,” I argue. “I just need to crash on your couch for a couple of days while I figure this out.”
“Mi casa es su casa,” she tells me. “But you get to wash the dishes.”
My eyes move to the other end of the kitchen, where a freshly-baked cake is sitting on a cooling rack, and ingredients that look like they’ll later become frosting sit tightly packed together next to a large mixing bowl.
“Whose birthday?” I ask, gesturing toward the stash with my head.
“Our neighbor,” she tells me. “She’s ancient and doesn’t have anyone to come see her. We were gonna take her a cake and some flowers.”
A smile spreads across my face and I reach forward to offer a few proud pats to the top of her head.
I worried a lot that I would screw her up when we were younger. That I was in over my head and destined to send her down a path that would ruin her chance at a future. I had no business trying to take care of a kid her age, but there wasn’t a chance in hell that I would have let her become property of the state and stay in foster care.
I should have done more than just pick up the phone. She told me she was moving in with some guy I’d never heard of before, and I should have come out here to meet him before I did. A phone call shouldn’t have felt like enough.
Grown woman or not, I should have taken the time to come out here more than I have.
“She’s married,” I finally say as I reach for a cake-crusted pan to bring it toward the sink.
