“You don’t even know what we’re talking about,” I say.
“You two are loud. The neighbors know what you’re talking about.”
Mom points her spatula at him, as though she’s casting a curse. After a pointed look and a severe frown, she returns to the stove. “Here,” she says, scooping two eggs onto a plate for me.
Carter waits for his but it never comes. “Hey,” he says, cereal falling from his mouth. “No eggs?”
Mom is brutal as she switches off the stove. “Not after that remark. What woman wants to be called loud?”
Carter looks to me for help, but I only shrug and suppress a laugh.
He licks his lips. “Um… empowered women who… own their shit and…” He searches the floor for answers. “Who don’t let a man tell them how quiet to be?”
Mom turns and we lock eyes, just staring at each other. Then we burst into laughter.
“You sound like a bad song from the twenty-tens,” Mom says while wiping moisture from her eyes. “What is wrong with you?”
Carter snorts into his cereal. His smoky-amethyst eyes catch the morning light, and for a second I’m struck by how settled he is here. It’s easy to forget he wasn’t always ours.
He was eleven when the car accident took both his parents, and Mom didn’t hesitate to help for a single second. She drove six hours to bring him home with us, set up the guest room, and told him it was his room now—that we were his family and nothing would change that. She said it so calmly and with such warmth, even though she’d barely taken time to grieve the loss of her sister, Carter’s mom.
I was ten at the time. Aeron was nine. He quickly accepted it because he wanted a brother.
Carter never talks about that year. The before-year, the year of losing everything. But sometimes I catch him looking around our home like he can’t quite believe it exists and that he gets to be part of it.
“Back to the drama,” Mom says, plating the rest of the eggs she’d been frying. “Have you talked to Dorien since the gallery?”
I poke my eggs around my plate. “New subject.”
She gives me a “Mom look” and a soft “hmm,” like she knows all the answers and how all of us should be living our best lives.
And she does know a lot. She knows 99% of everything about me. All except the truth about the day that changed any possibility ofanythingwith Dorien.
Carter chimes in, “You two would be the cutest power couple.”
“You’re a liar and should be disowned immediately.”
He laughs and holds up both hands in mock surrender. “Hey, Dorien’s the one who said you were having your little moment in front of his sculpture.”
“It wasn’t amoment?—”
“I heard you barely even blinked.”
“I was analyzing the piece. That’s different.” I can feel my cheeks heating, which is annoying because I don’t blush. I’m not a blusher. I’m a person with excellent emotional regulation who absolutely does not turn pink when someone mentions Dorien Kael. Then Carter’s words actually sink in. “Wait. Dorien said that? When?”
Carter laughs so hard he almost falls off his stool.
Mom sets ketchup on the kitchen island, as if that’s the reason I’m not eating much of the eggs. I recognize the look on her face. It’s her counselor look she uses on students who come to her office thinking they’re being subtle about their problems.“Honey. You’ve been ‘analyzing’ that boy since Bonnie brought him over for your first play date.”
“That’s not—I don’t—” I stab a piece of egg with my fork, determined to finish breakfast so I can leave. “Can we talk about literally anything else?”
“The weather’s been nice,” Carter offers.
“Thank you.”
“Very sunny. Good for painting, I bet.”
“Agreed. Great painting weather.”
