Dad’s a family law attorney. Probably not the best job for a man with a big, squishy heart, who can’t stand to see kids suffering or former lovers doing their best to rip each other apart in court, but he takes pride in his work.
And in being the kind of husband and father his family can be proud of.
“Dad, I told you, modern velociraptors don’t have bones,” Bea would say, dancing over to steal a piece of bacon from the serving plate on the island. “We’re made of rubber. And fueled by a thirst for vengeance and bacon. Mmm, is this the good stuff from the farmer’s market?”
“Would I feed my baby velociraptor anything less? Now, how many pancakes? Two or three?” Dad would ask, catching mygaze over Bea’s head with a smile. “And how about you, dinosaur hunter? Is it a three-pancake morning?”
“Four, please, I have a game,” I’d say, reaching around Bea to snatch my own bacon appetizer, blissfully unaware of how numbered our happy Saturday mornings were.
Fast forward a couple of years, and I only came home from university during semester breaks. Soon, those windows would close as well. Once I was drafted, between the NHL and finishing my degree online, there wasn’t much time to make it home.
The last pancake morning I remember was when I was twenty-one, fresh from my first training camp.
For the first time, I made it downstairs first.
When I stepped into the kitchen, it was just Mom and Dad, suddenly looking so much older than I remembered, though it had only been nine months since I’d been home for Christmas. Their smiles were strained, and Dad had overslept and hadn’t made it to the farmer’s market for the good bacon.
I was about to ask where Bea was when she trudged up the stairs from the basement, where I would later learn she’d relocated, claiming the guest room down there was better for an “actual adult.”
She wasn’t an adult, though. She was a newly graduated senior, a suddenly angsty teen who circled her eyes in rings of eyeliner, dressed exclusively in black, and “wasn’t hungry” for pancakes.
“What?” I asked, laughing. “You’ve got to be kidding. The velociraptor’s always hungry for pancakes.”
Bea winced in second-hand embarrassment before glancing my way. “Stop, dude. Your jokes are even more cringe than Dad’s.”
“I wasn’t joking,” I countered, sobering. “I was serious. You love pancakes, and you’re always hungry.”
Bea shrugged, emitting a weary sigh as she rolled her eyes. “I’m notalwaysanything, Baylor. Not everyone is so pathologically…consistent, you know?”
I glanced to where Mom stood at the counter, pouring coffee. As our eyes met, she shrugged and gave a sad, little shake of her head as if to sayI’m not sure where our baby dinosaur went either.
“Anyway, I have to go,” Bea said, snagging her purse—also black—from the hook by the side door. “Kai’s picking me up in five, and we have to hurry if we’re going to have time to grab coffee before sound check.”
“Will you be home for dinner?” Dad flipped a pancake with a sharp flick of his wrist.
“I can’t,” Bea said, already drifting toward the door. “I told you, we don’t know what time we go on for our second set.”
“Your brother’s only home for the weekend,” Mom piped up, a pleading note in her voice. “We’d really love to have a family meal while he’s here.”
“Yeah, sure, tomorrow,” Bea said, slamming outside before any of us could reply.
A moment later, Kai pulled up in his van, a piece of shit Ford Econoline with rusted-out wheel wells, covered in bumper stickers. I watched through the window as Bea climbed into the passenger’s seat, a big grin stretching across her face.
It’s the only time I saw her smile the entire weekend.
And by the time that “family dinner” rolled around, she was so exhausted from staying up all night the night before, it was like trying to have “quality family time” with a cranky dust bunny we’d fished out from under the bed in the basement.
I wanted to tell her that she was headed down a bad road. That any relationship that turned her into a jerk who treated the people who loved her like crap was a crap relationship. But then it was time for me to go back to my own, very busy life, andconcerns about my angsty little sister faded to the back of my mind.
Besides, I was only twenty-one and barely had time to date. What the fuck did I know about toxic relationships at that point?
Nothing, honestly.
By the time I realized that Kai was a narcissistic piece of shit who’d “love bombed” Beatrice just long enough to get her out on the road, isolated in a shitty tour bus, where he could treat her like shit at his leisure, it was years later. Still, I nearly convinced Bea to leave two years ago, right before Violet Widow’s second studio album blew up, and my sister’s haunting voice was suddenly all over indie radio.
I was happy for her success, I really was.
I just wished it had happened in a way that didn’t tie her even more tightly to Kai and the two other male band members, old friends of his who seem to blame Bea for the volatility in the group. She’s the “Yoko” in their minds, apparently.
