We exchanged a glance before deciding it was better not to push our luck. All six of us stood in a line as Dad surveyed us.
“I’ll tell your mother about this. Not a word from any of you. Understand?” he said. Ezra and I didn’t need to agree. It was our fault we were in this situation in the first place. My fault. “Parker,” Dad called on my baby sister.
She’d kill me if she heard me call her that. At eleven, Parker wasn’t exactly a baby anymore, but I don’t think any of us saw her as anything else. She was our only sister. The final Foster. Everyone doted on Parker and with good reason. Unlike the rest of us, her dark streak had yet to develop properly. She might have known and seen what the family business was about, but she took minimal interest in it, and why should she when she had five brothers who would sort any issue she had? Parker would never need to fight her own battles with all of us around. None of my siblings would as long as I was alive.
Parker looked to Dad, bag slung over her shoulder, hair coiled so she looked like Princess Leia, and hockey stick in hand. Maybe it was unfair to say that Parker didn’t possess the Foster violent streak. She was feral when she hit the pitch, and Dad never looked as proud as he did after a match.
“Head inside. Tell your momma I’ll be in there now.”
Parker broke ranks and walked up the line towards the front door. She stopped near Ezra and hugged him around the middle, and he dropped a kiss on her head. Then she stopped in front of me and I held my arms out but she didn’t move for a hug. Instead, Park popped out the mouthguard that she’d probably been sucking on angrily since she’d been pulled out of school by Dad.
“You screwed up my practice,” she informed me. “You need to make up for it on the weekend if you’re still alive.” Without another word or a hug, she marched off into the house to find Mom.
“The rest of you,” Dad said once the front door closed again. He ran a hand down his face. “Stay in your rooms until dinner. We don’t need an audience for this one.” The twins started to laugh, and Dad gave them a pointed look. “Don’t think you two are in the clear after this morning.”
Dexter and Rowan had started the day by hiding Dad’s prosthetic leg. The pair of them had always been a little troublesome growing up. Always huddled together in corners having conversations that only they could understand. Mom had said the mischievous streak they held would ease as they got older, but having just turned thirteen, it felt like they had doubled their efforts.
This morning, Dad had point-blank asked Mom if she’d had an affair with Uncle D because he refused to claim ownership to them. I vaguely wondered if Dad would deny fathering me and Ezra after our incident.
“We are though,” Dex told him with a nonchalant shrug.
“Yeah,” Row agreed. “What we did is nothing compared to Link and Ez.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Dad grumbled. “All of you in the house. I don’t want to hear a word out of any of you while I break it to her.”
We traipsed into the house, following behind Dad.
“Luc? Is everything alright?” Mom called from the kitchen and he didn’t say anything more to us as he left to join her.
“When she kills you,” Dex said, looking up at me, “can I have your room?”
I lunged at him but he slipped away, running towards the kitchen laughing again. Rowan followed after him, calling out, “I’ll take yours, Ez!”
“You could always appeal.” Chase was still standing with us in the hallway.
The sound of paws across the wooden flooring got louder until Atlas, our husky, joined us, gravitating towards Chase. Atlas had favourites with the list comprising of Mom and Chase. Everyone else was an inconvenience for our high maintenance pup.
“What would be the point?” I asked him in return.
“It’d probably make Mom happy.”
“You’re going to make an amazing attorney someday,” Ezra muttered. “You know how to hit people where it hurts.”
Chase scratched Atlas between the ears as he responded, “I’ll be the reason none of you end up in prison.”
“And we’ll be eternally grateful,” Ez told him.
If you asked me out of all of the Foster siblings, including myself, who you needed to keep an eye out for, it was Chase. He was a marvel to watch. Three years younger than me, Chase was calculated rather than reactive. He valued Mom’s approach to the business. Book loving and quiet, Chase had skipped a grade and was on the fast track to an Ivy League college. Harvard Law to be exact. He had big dreams that had absolutely nothing to do with fighting for justice. Chase planned to use every ounce of his brains and charm to exploit every flaw in the system and ensure the entire family was kept safe.
I asked him once, why bother with college? It seemed pointless for my genius little brother who seemed to absorb knowledge the moment he read it. Chase had shrugged and said it was because he could. It was about ego rather than hard work. I had a sneaking suspicion it was because Kennedy Silveri had expressed an interest in studying there and my brother would have walked straight into hell if she was leading the procession through the gates. Idiot.
“I’m being serious,” Chase told us. “Appeal if you’re willing to tell them why you got into the fight in the first place.” He looked at us expectantly.
Ezra tensed and I shook my head. “It was over nothing,” I told Chase. “You know what people are like.”
“It’s your funeral,” he responded and led Atlas away, probably into the kitchen to join the rest of them.
“Maybe we should appeal and tell them.” Ezra ran his hand down his face and reminded me of Dad as he did so. “The school board, I mean. Not Mom and Dad and the rest of them.”
