Page 6 of Brenna, Brat

Maybe not, but she had moved into his mansion and now she was wearing a diamond bigger than the gearshift knob of my car on her hand. She held that up in front of me. “Yes, I’m marrying Beckett, and I don’t want to hear anyone’s negative, jealous crud about it,” she announced.

“Jealous?” I pointed to my sternum. “Me? You think I’m jealous?”

“I think Sophie’s right and you’re a brat,” JuJu answered. She and I were only twenty-one months apart, and our ages would have seemed to set us up for friendship. But we had never really gotten along, because we were so different. Juliet had always been an achiever, a success in sports and with friends—she had pretty much ruled our high school.

As always, our sister Addie stepped in to be the peacemaker. There were so many of us that people seemed to need a diagram to remember our birth order, but it wasn’t difficult. Nicola was the oldest, then Sophie, then Addie. Juliet and her twin Patrick were next, and I followed them. For two beautiful years, I had been the youngest, but then Grace entered our lives via our mother’s thirty-six-hour, drug-free labor that she loved to describe in detail.

I didn’t really remember the time before Grace, but I could picture how nice it must have been for me as (temporarily) the youngest child. She and Nicola were the endcaps of our family and they obviously received a lot of attention because of it. Sophie got it, too, because she was the smartest and our father’s favorite, and Patrick was always our mom’s number one kid. Juliet had been an incredible athlete and she drew a lot of interest from everyone due to her success, and Addie? She was so nice that people loved her, just like the guy she’d married did. He didn’t say much, but he looked at her and it was written all over his face.

Her next statement was totally in character: “You guys, let’s not mark this occasion with fighting. It’s the wonderful moment that our sister told us that she’s engaged, and I’m so happy for you, JuJu.”

They hugged and all of my sisters were smiling, even Grace who was somehow paying attention. But I still had a lot of doubts, which I tried to express in a manner that wouldn’t make them tell me to shut up again. “No one has any objections to this?” I asked, and that was when I saw my three oldest sisters slide glances at Juliet. “What is that?” I demanded immediately. “Why did you just look at her that way? What’s going on?”

“I wasn’t going to talk about it today,” Juliet started off, and Nicola reached over to hold her hand.

“What? What’s wrong, JuJu?” I demanded. We weren’t friends, of course, but if something had happened…

“Beckett is sick,” she said simply and then, to my total shock, I saw her eyes fill with tears. Juliet never cried, never. She stopped talking and visibly attempted to get her emotions under control, but it wasn’t happening. She shook her head.

Nicola took up the story. Juliet’s new fiancé had cancer, she explained. He’d had it as a teenager and it had recurred. He was undergoing treatment and she had so much faith that he’d soon be in another remission, but it made sense for them to hurry their plans. They weren’t rushing, she told us, and shot me a glare. It was just a little more speed than expected due to his illness and we were all going to support them. “We will besupportive,” she reiterated, and she was laser-focused on me as she said the words.

I opened my mouth again but before I could speak, Sophie kicked me under the table so hard that tears filled my eyes, too. “And the other news is something that I’ve been meaning to tell all of you,” she said as I bent to rub my injured shin. “Two days ago, Danny and I got married.”

We turned to her, universally shocked. “What did you just say?” Nicola demanded.

“There’s no waiting period in Ohio after you get your license,” she answered calmly. “We figured we’d better do it sooner rather than later, since I’m pregnant.”

“Holy Mary! So am I!” Addie told everyone, and everything dissolved into congratulations and celebration. It was stomach-churning.

At least we were comfortable here in Juliet’s new house situated on Lake St. Clair, because the place was big enough for everyone (it was big enough to accommodate most of the population of the city of Detroit). Also, she had provided a lot of snacks and I ate those as I waited for my sisters to calm down. These events, babies and weddings, were not so uncommon but they were all acting as if they deserved to have their names in lights.

They went on (for much too long) but the upshot remained the same: Juliet and Beckett were getting married, and it would apparently happen soon due to his illness and despite the fact that they hardly knew each other. Sophie was already married, having snuck around and not caring that her family might havewanted to be in attendance. Addie was pregnant and due a little before Sophie and basically, their kids would be twins. It was all just great because what we really needed in our ridiculous family was more chaos.

I was the only one who saw any problems, though; all my big sisters were overjoyed. I turned to Grace to see what she thought of their nonsense. But her chair was empty and it turned out that she’d gone for a walk and managed to fall through the ice on the lake. Nicola freaked out about hypothermia because Grace had always been like her baby, since our mother absolutely sucked at parenting so our biggest sister had to step in and handle the situation. “She’s a grown woman,” I pointed out, but was told to go find towels and to help instead of criticizing.

Instead, I left. I had things to do besides sitting around and watching them fuss over Grace and congratulate each other on their awesome lives. It wasn’t that I felt angry about all their amazing, uplifting crap. Mostly, they deserved happiness (I wasn’t positive that Juliet did, but definitely Addie, probably Nicola, and I leaned toward a yes for Sophie, too). I was also very, very sorry that JuJu’s fiancé was sick, but the guy had a lot of money to throw at the problem, so he would be ok. Wouldn’t he? I knew he was ultra-rich. The place where they lived, the place that I had just exited, was a French Norman-style estate that was a lot like a castle, and the art inside it was amazing. I’d been over there a few times, once at Beckett’s invitation to look at his collection and again because he had asked for my opinion on his kitchen remodel. It was lucky he’d done thatsince the colors, cabinet style, and countertops he had picked were terrible, but it hadn’t been too late to make changes.

I actually liked the guy and I thought that even though he was very different from my annoying sister Juliet, they made a good couple. Now that I was driving home and I was digesting the information, I felt even worse that he wasn’t well and I thought of Juliet crying. Even if he did have all that money, I couldn’t imagine…

This just sucked. I banged my fist on the steering wheel in frustration. I had spent my whole Saturday morning dealing with them and we’d accomplished nothing except establishing (again) that Grace was a danger to herself and needed a minder. What a waste of my valuable time, I seethed, when there were so many things that I could have been doing on this dark winter day.

I tried to think of what those things would be.

Well, I might have made the new dress I’d been dreaming about, one that would have been perfect for a New Year’s party. I hadn’t really gone out that night—I’d been at Nicola’s for a while but both she and her husband had fallen asleep around nine. Babies, they’d told me, made you tired. I didn’t have anyone else that I wanted to go out with, because unlike three of my older sisters, I had gone away to college. I’d been in New York for fashion school, which meant that I didn’t have much of a local crowd besides some very lame acquaintances from high school. Who wanted to hang out with them anymore? I hadn’t wanted to do that even when we’d been “friends.”

The result was that I hadn’t had a place to wear that dress so I hadn’t bothered to work on it, or even to start cutting the beautiful fabric I’d bought. It had cost so much per yard that I’d had to close my eyes when the number flashed on the terminal and I put my credit card into it, and I couldn’t waste it…I considered Juliet’s wedding. If she didn’t have to make me a bridesmaid (if Nicola didn’t force her into it), then I would wear it there. I might even outshine the bride, I thought, but then shook my head. No, there was no way. Juliet was beautiful, for one thing, and she had a body that made everything look good, even the horrible clothes that she had bought in the past few years when she’d been on a huge spending spree. I would never outshine any of my sisters for a variety of reasons. Not that I cared.

The idea of going back home didn’t appeal much to me. This day was so sad and unappealing in general, and I kept thinking about Juliet, her fiancé, and their bad news. The other news, that there would soon be two new Curran babies, also didn’t fill me with a whole lot of glee or anything. I was mostly ambivalent toward kids. My sister Sophie was splitting the burden of caring for my brother Patrick’s daughter (a long story) and I didn’t mind that niece. The one that Nicola had was smaller and less interesting but was still pretty cute, especially in the clothes I made. But two more? And that was probably just the beginning. If Juliet was rushing into marriage, she’d be rushing into kids, too, and my mother was going to pass out in happiness. I didn’t believe that she cared much for her actual children, but she really loved the idea of a big family and she was really into the concept of grandkids.

I had my phone silenced because I didn’t want to hear anything more about Grace and her hypothermia or about any of the news we’d discussed today at Juliet’s house. That was why I didn’t see the other message until I got home and was just about to head back upstairs to Cleo and a long afternoon.

“This is Campbell Bates. You wrote your name and number on the business card from the gallery, and I think it was so I’d get in touch.”

He was very sure of himself, wasn’t he? It was a shocking amount of self-confidence. Then, as I sat mulling over what I should do, another message came in: “I’m going ice skating. Interested?”

What? I thought of how he’d left the gallery, when he’d asked me out and I’d turned him down. Why would he have wanted me to go anywhere with him? “Just FYI, I give my information to all the customers who buy art from me,” I typed.

“Maybe,” he said, and I felt like he was smiling as he sent that. “Want to skate?”

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