Page 60 of Brenna, Brat

“Are they spending the weekend together here?” he asked, and Dion nodded. “So you need somewhere to go, and you called Brenna?”

“Mom—I mean, Jackie and I talked about it, and it’s only fair,” my new brother responded. “Brenna was the one who insisted that I live here.”

“What?” I exploded. “I did both you andmymom a favor by introducing you and explaining how the situation could be mutually beneficial. I didn’t insist anything!”

“Why can’t you go to your actual mother’s house, or to a friend’s?” Campbell suggested, and that was when we discovered a few more problems. One was that Dion’s car was gone.

“It disappeared,” he said.

“From this neighborhood? That piece of shit?” Campbell asked, shaking his head.

“I got some weird calls, too,” Dion continued, and I bit my lip. “I don’t want to be here if I’m going to put Jackie in danger, and I don’t want to put someone else in the same position.”

He sounded remarkably mature and thoughtful, except…

“You didn’t feel the same way about putting me in danger, though?” I asked, and he shrugged.

“Jackie said that you were going up north, and I thought it would be good to get out of town. I’ve never been up there but I heard it’s nice. I get carsick,” he mentioned, “so I should probably sit in front.”

Campbell reached over and put his hand on my shoulder. “Brenna and I are going to discuss this,” he told the guy who was absolutely staying in the back seat. “Keep quiet while we do.”

The upshot was, Ghregg Bates’ house up north was big. There would be plenty of room for one extra guest, and Dion was probably right that he should get out of town if strange things were happening. After all, the firebombing at the gallery had been presaged with a bunch of weird phone calls, like he’d said had started up again.

“I don’t want to leave him here with your mom and dad,” Campbell concluded.

“Is my father really staying over for the weekend?” I asked him, as if he might have the answer. Had Sophie been right about Dad falling for our mother’s ruses?

Dion spoke up. “He really is. Mom thinks they might get back together.”

Holy Mary.

“This isn’t some romantic trip, right?” he asked the two of us in the front seat. “You guys aren’t having a getaway fuck weekend, right?”

“No,” Campbell answered immediately.

I started to shake my head vigorously, to make sure that everyone knew that I was also not, absolutely not, thinking about having sex with him. “Definitely not!” I confirmed.

“So what’s the problem? Did I already say that I need to be in the front seat?”

“Not happening,” Campbell responded, and he backed up the car.

I set some ground rules, mostly about whining, complaining, and getting in the way of others’ fun, and Dion agreed to them. He couldn’t stop himself from working the carsick angle for a while but when it got nowhere, he put his head back, and then he started to snore.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

Campbell laughed softly. “I don’t mind him,” he told me. “He was funny when I went to the dinner.”

They had both attended the last family dinner that Mom had thrown; Dion had seated himself in my dad’s place at the table, actually, and Sophie had almost choked. He hadn’t known what he was doing, and he’d apologized when she sputtered out that…that…

“Our father used to sit there,” Addie had explained, and Nicola had given Sophie a look.

“It doesn’t matter,” Soph had told him, and she’d tried hard to behave as if she truly felt that way. After that incident, though, we had gotten along just fine. Dion had been charming and cool, which explained why all those women had fallen for him. Again, and again, and again.

“Do you think someone’s actually after him?” I asked. I didn’t want to worry about Dion, but I was.

“I think it’s a good idea for him to get away. I think it would also be a good idea for him to listen to us when we say to call the police. This is information that the arson investigators would want to have,” he answered. But Dion had refused to do that,saying that the cops hadn’t figured out anything yet, and why would he have trusted them?

I had more questions about what had happened—and might have been currently happening—at my mom’s house. “Do you think that my parents are getting back together right now?”

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