“This isn’t your job.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why are you doing it?”
She turns off the water and looks at me across my mother’s kitchen. “Because your sisters were hungry and scared, and you were at the hospital.”
Simple.
Annoyingly simple.
The kind of answer that leaves me nowhere to put my anger.
Emma and Lily have gone still, watching us with the predatory interest of children who know adults are having a conversation under the conversation.
I force my hand open around the coffee mug.
“Thank you,” I say.
Peyton nods once and goes back to the dishes.
Mrs. Alvarez’s gaze moves between us. “Well. This is wildly none of my business.”
“Then act like it,” I say.
“I am. Quietly. In my heart.”
I take my coffee outside before I say something that earns me a family vote.
Fog still clings to the fields. The barn sits low and red in the distance. Fence lines cut through pasture my body knows even when my life has become arenas, planes, cameras, and men in suits explaining what version of me sells best.
The farm does not care what version of me sells.
A gate sags near the east fence because my dad keeps saying he will fix it after the next rain and the next rain keeps becoming a season. The porch rail needs paint. One of the twins has left a soccer ball in the flower bed, and my mother will pretend not to notice until she steps on it, then deliver a lecture about household ambush tactics.
None of it is impressive.
That is the point.
This place does not need me polished. It needs gates closed, feed carried, buckets rinsed, and dinner answered for when my mother calls.
It made me useful before usefulness became a brand.
Peyton sitting on the porch in my mother’s apron feels more dangerous than any camera because she can see the difference.
The screen door creaks.
Peyton sits on the porch step beside me, leaving a careful foot of space.
She does not speak.
That is new.
Reporters ask. PR frames. Coaches correct. Teammates chirp until quiet breaks or becomes a joke. Peyton just sits there, mug between her hands, looking at the field instead of me.
The quiet with her feels different.
It should not steady me.
