Page 57 of Brenna, Brat

“Laos? That’s where she is?” he asked, and put down his second cookie as he leaned forward, staring intently. “What else do you know about this?”

“She wanted me to go over to her mother’s house to say goodbye, because she told me that she wasn’t coming back. Ever. I’m surprised that you’re interested,” I mentioned.

“My real mom, you know, she wanted to hear…” he said vaguely, but then he narrowed his eyes. “Why did Aunt Alecta ask you to speak for her?”

“She said that she’d tried to get in touch with you, but you weren’t answering, and neither was your mother. I have to think that I’m the only reasonably responsible person she knows. She said that she couldn’t call or text, just like you did today. Is this some kind of familial failing?”

He ignored that. “Did Alecta say why she couldn’t use her damn phone to talk to Grandma Shyril?”

Shyril, aka Chic Cathay. “She told me that she didn’t know if Chic had a phone.”

“Of course she knows that! Grandma Shyril has a cell phone and also an old one in her house that hangs on the wall,” he said, snorting. “How else could Alecta and my mom bother her all the time to ask for money?”

To me, it hadn’t appeared that Chic Cathay had much of that. Alecta had definitely lied to me before in order to make herself sound more impressive, but why would she have lied about her mother’s phone situation?

“I don’t know,” Dion responded when I asked exactly that question. “What else? What else were you supposed to say in your message?”

There wasn’t much more, which I conveyed. “She wanted me to tell Chic that she loved her, and that things were fine. Something like that. Alecta always does this kind of stuff,” I reminded him. “It’s her typical pattern of running away from responsibilities, like how she always disappeared right before Christmas so she wouldn’t have to worry about bonuses for us or even going out for cocktails. She’s probably thinking that she’ll get in trouble with the insurance company or the arson investigators because she let her friend keep his floor refinishing supplies in a huge, flammable pile right in the main room of the gallery. Or maybe she’s concerned because it really was one of her customers who threw the firebomb.” That was the story that I’d been pushing out to anyone who asked, especially my family.

“Yeah, it could be…” he responded, vague again and now biting his lip. “What did Grandma Shyril say back to you?”

I told him about Chic Cathay’s response to her daughter’s message and departure. “Why does it matter?” I asked, and he said that it didn’t, he was just curious. “Maybe you shouldn’t be so involved in what your family is doing,” I advised, which really was ironic coming from me. “Maybe now is a good time for you to get involved in new things. I have a different job, and you should get one, too. Because you still owe rent here.”

We both turned our heads at the sound of a much louder crash in the meditation room. “What is she doing?” I asked. “Is she redecorating in there again?”

Dion didn’t seem to know and Mom refused to answer when we knocked on the door. The whole visit had been useless, except that I’d promised my siblings that since I was the one responsible for introducing him into the household, I would also be responsible for monitoring the situation. The fact that they were adults and shouldn’t have needed monitoring appeared to have escaped my family’s notice, but I was willing to show up if it got everyone off my back. I didn’t really mind saying hello—and as a bonus, there were cookies. The kitchen had a lot more groceries in general and my mother appeared very happy to have my weird former coworker around. He seemed happy, too, and he didn’t look quite so skinny anymore. They had been doing yoga together and he was, I could admit, much improved when he wasn’t shirking work or whining.

Anyway, that had been a useless errand and I had a lot of other stuff to do. It was my day off from my new job at the hospitalwhere Nicola also worked. I didn’t mind it much, and the people there were much better organized than at the gallery. But I had so many projects to take care of, because this weekend—

Holy Mary. I’d thought that my phone would have become less busy now that the wedding was over and JuJu and Beckett were back from their honeymoon, but that simply wasn’t the case. “I already read what you wrote in the group text about how Esme said ‘dodo’ and somehow you’re sure that it means ‘Sophie,’” I answered my sister’s call. “I already congratulated you and her, ok?”

“She’s done it three more times and it’s so cute!” my sister said and then burped in my ear. “Sorry, excuse me. Pregnancy is affecting my stomach and I have such indigestion.”

“I have an utter lack of interest in your gastric issues,” I informed her. “Why are you calling? Again?”

I heard her try to smother another disgusting noise emanating from her gullet. “I just talked to Dad,” she said. “Mom is up to something.”

I thought of the crashing noises in the meditation room. “What is that supposed to mean? More of the same?”

I already knew how our mother had been dragging her feet and refusing to settle on anything related to the pending divorce. She had been approaching everything like it was a battle, like she had to strategize and then win no matter how insignificant the issues seemed to us. That was a big reason why she needed Dion’s rent. The lawyer bills were getting crazy, and Dad (through Sophie) had been trying to get her to back off and calmdown because they were both wasting so much money. Like, she couldn’t have really cared about the division of the Christmas decorations, Soph had argued. Was it worth another billable hour, or three, or four? More?

Yes, according to our mom. Yes, it was worth anything, a million of those hours no matter what her attorney charged for them (it was a lot). “You kids made those ornaments with your tiny, sweet hands,” she’d said back to my sister. “I’m not going to pass over boxes of precious memories without a fight!”

So Dad had given up on dividing the decorations, but that was just one of the many, many problems that she was refusing to resolve amicably. “What’s happening now?” I asked, and that was the problem. Sophie wasn’t sure, but she was concerned.

“Apparently, she asked him to come over to talk about things face-to-face, without the lawyers.”

“That’s good,” I said. Nobody could bill for that time, then.

No, it wasn’t, it was suspicious. “You know how he falls for all her stupid ruses,” my sister told me.

“Why are you so involved in this? Stop talking to Dad and stay out of it. Worry about how you’re alienating people by belching into their ears and telling boring baby stories.”

“Brat!” She hung up, but I was mostly right. She shouldn’t have installed herself as our father’s confidante, and she should have only texted or emailed until she could contain her excess stomach gas. I didn’t really mind hearing about Esme, though, or seeing pictures of her in the clothes I made.

When I was in my studio and reviewing my latest project, I told myself that I was also right that personal communication between Mom and Dad was better. Campbell and his family were a prime example of how going through intermediaries didn’t work at all; their lawyers were talking but they still weren’t to each other, and it wore on him. The case against his dad was dragging slowly on toward a trial, with no end in sight. Three of the other executives from the Ghregg Bates Financial Group had been indicted and so had two partners and several employees at a major accounting firm that had aided and abetted in the fraud. I could see how that wore on Campbell too, as did his lack of a job. Everything was.

That was why, when he’d suggested going away this weekend, I’d gladly said yes. “We have a house up north and it’s still ok for us to use it,” he’d mentioned. “It’s right on Lake Michigan and it’s nice.”

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