Page 33 of Townshipped
“I’m just going to see if my mom needs anything,” I tell Em. “You okay here?”
“She’s fine,” Lexi answers for her. “We’re not wolves. She can hang out while you go one room away, Aiden.”
Em giggles at my expense, and I let her. Hearing her laugh is worth a little mortification.
I reluctantly leave the living room and sidle up to my mom, kissing her cheek after she sets the casserole dish she just pulled from the oven up onto the stovetop.
“Hey, Mom.”
“Aiden. I’m so glad you’re here.”
I lower my voice. “Karina said there’s something you wanted to talk to me about.”
“Vanessa disappeared again. Some man she’s been seeing. Left the kids with Mark and Deb last night to go on adateand never returned.” Mom emphasizes the word date.
“This morning she texted Deb to say she’s taking some time to go with this guy on a little getaway, and would Mark and Deb mind keeping the kids for a bit.”
I spear my hands through my hair. I can’t help the feelings that rise up in me. I want to drive to Michigan and check on Vanessa’s kids. More than that, I’d like to ring my cousin’s neck for always backing out when people need her most, especially her children.
“Thanks for telling me.”
“I wanted you to know, but I didn’t want to tell you in front of Em or ruin the tone of the evening. Tonight should be about Poppy and welcoming her into our family.”
“Yeah, it should. And it will be.”
Dad pops his head into the kitchen. “Everything okay in here? Need an extra set of hands?”
“We’re good. Have everyone wash up and move into the dining room,” Mom tells him with a smile that carries a bit of weariness beneath it.
She takes on problems like a bee collecting pollen until she’s fully swollen with concerns that don’t belong to her. This situation with Vanessa hangs heavy on her like a weighted saddlebag.
Em and I are seated next to one another for dinner. Conversation flows and she asks my family members questions about themselves and about me. They have no problem telling her embarrassing stories of my childhood and teen years.
“I’ll pay you back,” I tell Trevor after he shares about my highwater Sadie Hawkins trousers and the way I pulled my waistband up to my rib cage because the pants kept falling off. He’s not wrong. I didn’t fill out until the middle of high school.
“He looked like Pee-wee Herman!” Trevor exclaims, seeming undeterred by my threats.
Em’s face crinkles. She obviously can’t remember who Pee-wee Herman is.
Trevor, now in full-fledged baby-brother mode, pops up from the table, rushes to the hall and grabs down a photo of said night where I look like I was avoiding a flood. My socks show about three inches before the bottom hem of my tux pants.
“You gave new meaning to ‘high fashion,’” Trevor says, laughing at his own joke.
“And I see fatherhood has come with the new skill of telling awesome dad jokes.”
I stare at the picture. The photo really captured me at that age—fourteen, maybe almost fifteen.
I turn an accusatory eye toward my mother. “Mom, why on earth does this still exist? And why is it hanging in the hallway of our home?”
“You look dashing,” Mom says, seemingly sincerely.
I study the picture as it passes by me again, landing in Em’s hands. I’m staring back at myself from the photo, a gangly figure, kind of like Groot from the Avengers. And my complexion wasn’t much better than his. Hormones made my voice shift octaves like a truck with a bad clutch, and my face always had a rosy glow—not from exercise or sun, from the acne.
Then there were the braces. As if my physique and skin weren’t enough to scare the girls away. I got a mouth full of metal the summer after eighth grade.
Em gushes, “You were so cute!”
“Okay. Well, we’ve all seen me in my adolescent glory now. Let’s just get that back onto the hall wall.”
