Page 7 of Deja New
FOUR
It could be worse,Angela reassured herself.It could be a lot worse. The boys are behaving. Mom is being... Mom, but I never expected anything else. Archer seems fine, he’s even teasing me a little. Ms. Nazir seems... er... hard to tell, actually...
And that’s when Leah Nazir’s big brown eyes rolled back and she pitched toward the floor. She would have face-planted if Archer hadn’t been so quick.
Her mother blinked, her way of showing extreme alarm. “Oh. Huh. I think she needs to rest. I’ll go check the...” And she drifted away, probably to check the guest room, which Angela already knew was perfectly appointed.
Coward.The thought rose in her brain like a bad-tasting bubble and, for once, Angela didn’t try to squash it. Her mother had been through a lot. Her sister-in-law succumbed to cancer a year before the murder, leaving her to raise all those kids on her own... (she’d taken the cousins, too, as they were virtualorphans). It had been tough, no question. But it hadn’t exactly been a laugh-fest for the rest of them, either, and Angela became a de facto parent at age thirteen, the minute the hearse pulled into Graceland Cemetery.
Still a coward, though. And Dad would have hated what she turned into. He wouldn’t appreciate her abandoning his brother, either.
Angela shoved all that away. “You got her? C’mon, let’s stretch her out on the couch. Should we take her to the ER? I can call 911.”
“I’ll do it!” From Paul.
“Bullshit!” From Mitchell, predictably, since he lived to keep track of everyone’s turn. “You got to call 911 when Jack fell out of the tree house. It’s my turn.”
“No, the last time we called 911 was when the neighbors called the cops onus—”
“Why are we always surrounded by tight-ass neighbors?”
“I’m already dialing, it’s done, I’m doing it,” Paul announced. “See? Niiiiiiine...”
“Hang that up unless you want to be on the stretcher next to me,” Leah managed from Archer’s arms.
“Okay,” Jordan said. “That’s pretty cool. I’ll hold Paul down for you, Leah, and you can work the body. I suggest starting with the lower ribs. Or his upper lip.”
“I’m fine,” she continued, waving away Jordan’s offer to help her assault his brother. “Temporary setback. I’ll be okay once I get off my feet.”
“Youareoff your feet,” Angela pointed out. She followed them, fretting the length of the hallway to the guest room. “Are you sure you don’t need a doctor?”
“I’m fine.”
“Do you often faint?”
“I did notfaint. Silly ingénues in bad movies faint.”
“Silly what now?”
“I temporarily blacked out.Verytemporarily. For barely a second. Half a second. Thank you,” she said as Archer deposited her on the bed with a flourish. “I was already a little under the weather, but I don’t need 911 or a doctor or an exorcism or anything of the sort and also, stop fussing.”
“Okaaaaaaay.”
“I’m pregnant,” Leah added, and grimaced.
“You’re—really?” Angela felt a huge grin break over her face.Why the grimace? Is she not happy? No, stop reading into it—she fainted in front of the in-laws. She’s a little embarrassed—because she doesn’t know how many people have swooned in our family room over the years.
“Yes, really,” Archer replied, smiling and puffing out his chest a bit, probably because he got to have sex.
“Well, that’s great! You’re gonna be a dad!” Angela was impressed, and not for the first time. Archer had been the first to
(flee)
leave home, hold down a number of odd jobs,
(Jordan kept a chart of them, and the thing was eye-popping)
fall in love, foil a murder, get engaged, and now to have a baby on the way. (In that exact order, too, she realized.) He, unlike the rest of them, had moved on. And not just on...forward. He was a grown-up, and not just chronologically. “That’s really great.”
