“Smells okay to me.” He takes a bite.
“You’re feeding your dog human food, and you can’t even take in your family.” Mom is reproachful.
“Take you in? You guys can stay the night here, then you need to go back home to Minnesota. I have a business deal I need to concentrate on. Kathy can live at the lake house with you. She’s not living here with me. I’m not cleaning up after her. Not again. Not this time. I warned you, Kathy. You made terrible decision after terrible decision. Maybe you can get a job at the burger place down the street from Mom and Dad’s.”
My dad looks guiltily at the floor.
“It’s just, ah, Winn…”
“No. You guys have a nice house on the lake. She can babysit.” I hear myself getting shrill.
“That, uh…” My parents look at each other.
“It wasn’t their house,” Gran declares as she opens a bottle of red. “Stay-at-home girlfriend here tied the family fortune to a man who was never going to commit.”
The expensive wine glugs into a mug.
“What do you mean that’s not your house? Yes, it’s your house!”
“It was Knox’s house. He bought it, and Mom and Dad live there, but since he broke up with me…” The explanation devolves into unintelligible wails.
My mom gathers Kathy to her chest and murmurs, “Daddy’s almost done with the omelet. That will make you feel better.”
“What happened to the money from the sale of your house, our childhood home?” My eye is bouncing all over the place. I press my index finger to my eye socket.
“It’s expensive to be the captain’s wife, Winn, you know that,” Dad cries. “Kathy needed Botox, and NHL players expect their wives to be blond, and she can’t go to the Stanley Cup finals in those old jeggings.”
“Then Knox should have fucking paid for it. Oh my god. What is his number?” I demand. “I’m calling him right now. This is bullshit.”
“He changed his number ever since he took up with that girl. And she is a girl.” Gran side-eyes me. “Girl with a lowercaseg.”
“He says she’s more fertile than me.” Kathy sobs. “He said he woke up one day and decided he wanted a big familylike Ryan West, and that I was too old to have lots of children, so he went out and found her.”
“I think that he probably was already banging her, but sure.” I cross my arms.
Kathy makes a pained noise.
“Believe what you want. It’s too late now.”
“Look, I’ll cook for you, Winn,” Dad says earnestly.
“And I’ll clean,” my mother says distastefully. “And you can have your sister work at the coffee shop.”
“I’ll work there too!” Gran salutes. “I’ll earn my keep. I’m not like the rest of these losers.”
“No, no one needs to earn their keep.”
“Oh, thank God.” Kathy sags. “I’m too distraught to work.”
“No one needs to earn anything, because you’re not staying here.”
“You can’t kick us out on the street.”
“I’m not throwing you out. I’m throwing you into the motel down the street.”
“Your sister can’t stay in a motel when she’s in a crisis!” Mom cries.
Fidget huddles up next to Kathy, who wraps her arms around her, and Fidget lovingly licks her face.
