“So?” I insisted. I wasn’t letting them go until they explained themselves.
“Well, house hunting can wait, honey,” Mom said.
“So you’re abandoning me. Again. It’s not even done being Thanksgiving yet?—”
“Thanksgiving is over, honey.”
I ignored her.
“And you’re rushing away. Again. Like thieves in the night.”
Mom tried to convince me they weren’t but I couldn’t even look at her. I couldn’t look at anything. All I could see was red. Red and despair.
“I can’t believe you. Were you not going to tell me? Were you going to leave a note with your granddaughter or attach it to the dog’s collar?” I pointed to the innocent, red pit bull Carson had adopted last year that had become part of the family, and Honeybee cocked her head as if apologizing for my shitty parents.
“Don’t be silly, Cole, honey. Of course we were going to tell you,” Mom said.
“Oh yeah? When?”
“Now?” Dad grimaced a smile as if his guilt could make up for them jetting off across the world again.
“I swear, it’s like you’re in a cult. Or addicts.” I huffed and walked to the nearest couch to collapse on it.
What was I going to do? How was I going to manage without them? I was stretched thin as it was.
“Oh, shut up, Cole,” Dad said. “There’s nothing cultish about cruises.”
“Well.” Mom squinted and pressed her lips together.
Dad chuckled as if it was some sort of inside joke only serial-cruisers would get but cleared his throat when he saw my terribly unamused face.
“Still. You know we hate the cold. We just wanted to go somewhere nice and hot, and then when we’re back, we’ll get out of your way.”
I huffed again.
As if I wanted them out of the house. It was their insistence—and to an extent, Carson’s—that this house wasn’t big enough for all of us. But I still wanted them here. I still needed them here, as selfish as that sounded.
“So you’re leaving me high and dry because you’d rather be sweating buckets than helping your son. Wow. Thank you. Parents of the year award coming right up.”
“Hey!” Dad whined but Mom patted his chest before she approached me and sat beside me on the couch.
“That’s not very fair, and you know it. We’ve given you boys our everything. We’ve worked hard for years. Can you blame us for wanting to enjoy our twilight years?”
I knew she was right. They’d worked all their lives to provide everything for us. They’d aged well beyond their years running the Grill before Carson took over. And even so, they hadn’tmissed an important moment in either of their children’s lives. Graduations, school plays, births, and deaths. They reallywereparents of the year.
“Yes. Yes, I can,” I said.
I knew I was just being a dick, but… I didn’t care.
Mom raised her eyebrows, and I pouted.
“How am I going to cope? Who’s going to watch Ella when I’m working? You know I can’t afford childcare.”
Mom’s eyebrows almost reached her forehead, and she squeezed my hand.
“That’s some bull-sushi and you know it.”
It might have been a year since the curse-word had been coined but it still made me flinch when anyone used it without Ella around.
