“But my feet are still in the hallway, and that’s what counts!” Poppy answered.
Turning to Poppy, Sienna said, “Give me a minute and I’ll come find you in your bedroom.”
“It’s really important. I need to talk to younow.”
Sienna pursed her lips. “Is the house on fire?”
Her little girl shook her head.
“Then I’ll see you in a couple of minutes. Get going, young lady.”
Poppy sighed dramatically before turning and stalking away with loud, thumping steps.
Sienna cleared her throat to get her son’s attention. “I know it’s an awfully hard thing we’re asking of you, Parker. But sometimes in life we have to do awfully hard things and there really is no other way. This is one of those times.”
He tossed the device onto the carpet, then stared at hismom. “You know, Mom, you can make me lie to everyone else, includingGrandma,who woulddieif she found out we were keeping her grandchild from her. But you can’t control what I know. And I’ll never stop knowing that he’s my little brother because that’s what he is.”
“Half-brother.”
“Does it matter?”
“Obviously it matters a great deal,” she snapped. “If he was your full brother, he’d be living here because he’d be mine too!”
“Just because he’s not yours doesn’t mean he’s not Dad’s. Or mine.”
“Parker, I am trying to save our family!”
“Really? Because it kind of feels like you’re trying to stop yourself from being humiliated.”
Sienna turned her face up toward the ceiling and scrunched her eyes shut. Opening them, she said, “Look, we’ve already explained it to you. It would hurt you kids, and the band, which means hurting Uncle Russ, and Uncle Steven, and Uncle Dean too. They didn’t do anything wrong. And neither did I.” She softened her voice. “And neither did you. Please don’t make your life harder than it has to be. Life’s hard enough as it is.”
“You don’t think Elliott deserves to know he’s got a brother and two sisters?”
“Sometimes we have to choose between two bad things because thereisn’ta good choice available. You’ll understand it when you’re an adult.”
“I doubt that very much.”
She blinked a few times, ordering herself to calm down. “Pack your things. I’ll be back in an hour to check that you’ve got everything.”
Sienna spun on her heel and walked out into the hallway,only to find Poppy standing there. She started, then said, “What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be in your room.”
“You took too long, so I thought maybe you forgot about me.”
Placing her hand on the top of her daughter’s head, she gently turned Poppy toward her bedroom. “I didn’t forget about you.”
“Sometimes you get busy and forget.”
“Well, Ididn’t,” Sienna said. As they walked into her daughter’s princess-themed room, Sienna felt a flash of anger toward Zane, who only needed to pack for himself without any interruptions, urgent matters, or complicated moral debates. “What’s so important? I have about a thousand things to do before bed.”
Poppy closed the door to her bedroom and gestured for her mom to sit down. It was all very grown-up, like she was a tiny principal about to give Sienna some bad news about her grades.You’re failing Parenting 101 this semester. You’ve put in a lackluster effort at best, and you’ve made terrible decisions that will haunt your family forever.
Sienna sat down on the four-poster bed and summoned every last ounce of patience she had (and there weren’t many in the bottle). “Okay? What’s going on?”
“What if I know someone is going to do something really bad, but if I tell, I’ll get in lots of trouble because I’m not supposed to know?”
Sienna’s heart sped up. “How bad?”
Poppy stood in front of her mom, her blue eyes wide. “Like, super-duperbad.”
