“Is Hunter buying our house back?” Minnie demanded.
“Yeah. I want my room,” Rose complained.
“I thought you hated that house,” I reminded my teenage sisters. “You were never there.”
“That was because of Barry,” Rose said, stealing one of my mozzarella sticks. “Stupid sexist old man.”
“He just got out of the hospital,” I chided.
“Yeah, then ran off with all our money and left us homeless.”
I sighed.
“You should get back together with Hunter so he’ll buy the house back,” Rose insisted.
“You can’t just rely on men for everything,” I told her.
“Hazel has Archer. I bet he’ll buy the house back,” Minnie countered, slouching in her seat.
“I’m not asking Archer to buy that house,” Hazel warned them. “It’s not even in that great of shape. Plus, it has all those teeny-tiny little rooms.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I told them. “As soon as I become mayor, we’ll have a lot more money coming in.”
“What if there are other debts we have to pay?”
Hunter still hadn’t been completely straight about the state of Barry’s finances. Surely, I couldn’t be on the hook for what he had spent, right?
“It will be fine. Why don’t you all look for apartments you like in town?” I told my sister, who groaned.
Everything will be fine, I repeated to myself as I ate my sandwich.It will all be fine.
6
Hunter
“Ican’t believe she wouldn’t let me help her!” I fumed when I returned to the estate house.
I had dropped Mayor Barry’s bags off with his secretary at city hall with instructions to mail it to his new residence. Then I had driven back to Meg’s apartment, wondering if it was a bad idea to go back up. I decided against it. She had rebuffed me earlier, like she had done so many times before ever since that one horrible night five years ago.
When I walked in, my little brothers were playing some sort of suicidal flying squirrel game where they were swinging from the banister of the grand stair in the foyer. I stood there a moment and waited. When my little brothers realized I was there, there were shrieks and blaming.
“Line up,” I ordered as they assembled in front of me by height. “Clearly you all have too much energy.”
Isaac grabbed the three newest additional toddler triplets, Justin, Jacob, and Johnny, and set them at the end of the line then hustled to his spot near the beginning.
“Isaac, switch places with Bruno. You’re taller than him.”
“Yes!” Isaac said, pumping his fist. I stifled a smile. As much as I complained about my little brothers, I would do literally anything for them. They were the reason I had given up my cushy existence in Manhattan to move back to Harrogate. They needed me, just like Meg’s sisters needed her. Really, she and I were meant to be together. Why could she still not accept that?
“It’s almost spring,” I told my brothers. “Why don’t you all go out and talk to Remy about planning a garden ready? People who are digging holes all day don’t have energy to destroy handcrafted woodwork in a historic house.”
Nate, one of the middle school–aged kids, raised his hands.
“What?”
“We could make a flower bed for Meg,” he offered. “Since she’s moving here.”
I gritted my teeth. “Change of plans.”
