Page 17 of Brenna, Brat

“Yum, cupcakes,” Juliet said. She had always been able to eat her weight without gaining any more, something else to hold against her.

“No.”

We turned to look at our dad.

“No,” he repeated. “I don’t want to be a part of this.” He suddenly stood and walked out of the room.

We watched him go, not understanding. “Mom, what’s happening?” Nicola asked, because if anyone was going to take charge, it was her.

“Here,” our mother answered, and put down the platter. “This explains it. One letter each, please.”

“Chocolate,” I heard Grace murmur, and I also looked at the display. There were seven cupcakes, one for each of us and each with a letter as Mom had mentioned. E, I, C…

“I’ll take the D,” Patrick said, and grabbed it. He was always interested in being first, and had always been treated by our mother as if he deserved that spot in the family hierarchy. Sophie took the O, Juliet had the V, Addie had the R.

“Hold on!” I barked. Couldn’t anyone else here spell? “Are these cupcakes sending a message? Patrick, give me that D.” I tookthe rest of them, too, and rearranged them on the platter to form a word: D-I-V-O-R-C-E. “Divorce?” I asked.

“Holy Mary,” Juliet said, expressing the shock that we all felt.

“Mom, what? Is this about you? Does this mean that you and Dad splitting up?” Patrick asked, and she burst into tears.

We stared at each other and at the dessert for another moment, stunned, and she ran upstairs to her yoga studio. After a while, we gave up on trying to coax her out or on getting her to answer any of our questions. Dad also refused to talk very much, although he did relay some information; his rendition was a lot less tearful and without any chocolate frosting. The problems were between him and Mom, he told us, and were not our business. Basically, they were no longer compatible, and he would be moving out next weekend.

Then he closed his office door. The seven of us siblings, now kids from a broken home, looked at each other and decided that we needed to go to a bar. That was where we headed en masse, and we secured a table where we sat, still stunned, but now with drinks in front of us. A few of those were non-alcoholic, but not mine. I had been really thrown for a loop by the message on those cupcakes, and I had turned to vodka. It seemed silly to care so much—I was old, and I didn’t even live at home. I shouldn’t have felt so upset, I reminded myself, and then swallowed half of the contents of my glass.

“This is just…” Addie stopped speaking, threw up her hands, and shook her head.

“I never thought it would happen,” Nicola agreed.

“Poor Mom,” Juliet said, since the two of them had always been extra tight.

“‘Poor Mom?’” Sophie repeated. “Are you kidding, after everything that Dad has had to put up with for all these years?” They started to argue about which of our parents was the worst.

“Is this my fault?” Patrick asked us when there was a break in their spat. “Is this something else that’s my fault, I mean? I was the one who brought Esme to live in their house last winter, and I know that was a problem between them.”

Sophie turned to scolding him instead. “Your daughter isn’t a problem,” she said.

“Your arrival was a stressor, though. Babies are, even though we love them,” Nicola continued to us all, and then looked over at him again. “Also, you were acting like a jerk.”

“Great. Now I caused my parents’ divorce,” my brother muttered.

“No, I’m not saying that,” she disagreed.

“You’re so self-centered, Patrick,” I told him. “Not everything is about you and your stupid kid.”

“Esme isn’t stupid, either!” Sophie said angrily. “She’s extraordinarily brilliant.”

“You know, if you guys hadn’t focused entirely on your own lives for the past few months, you would have seen that something was wrong,” I returned. “But it’s all about this baby, that engagement, this wedding, and on, and on.”

“Knock it off, Brat. Something was wrong from the day that our parents met,” Nicola said. “They were totally incompatible and they still have nothing in common, besides the seven of us. He was bowled over by how beautiful she is and she liked how he goes along with all her crazy ideas.”

“Not anymore. Now they’re getting divorced,” Juliet concluded, and she looked like she was going to cry again.

I felt shaky too, and fortified myself with more cranberry juice and vodka. Four of my sisters got busy texting, probably relaying information to their missing partners, and Patrick went to find Grace. She’d been in the ladies’ room for much too long, which probably meant she was locked in there again. It happened more frequently than it should have.

I, not having a guy to text, looked around at the other patrons. And across the bar from us, I spotted someone…no way.

“No way,” I said out loud. “Detroit is too big for this.” Why wasn’t he out in the suburbs where he belonged? I stared at the woman with him and drank in the details even faster than I had downed my cocktail. She had to have been his regular Friday night girl. I understood why she’d possess that place of honor, because she was beautiful although her highlights appeared slightly brassy due to the golden undertones in her skin. But it could have been the poor lighting in here, and even with that hair…she was really something.

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