“Gracie, baby, it's time for bed. Auntie starts her new job soon and she'd really like to catch up on some sleep before she takes her clothes off for strangers.” I whisper that last part to myself, doing my best not to think about the adult dancing job I just landed at the Top Hat Gentlemen's Club. I still have a few days to find something else, anything else.
My waist length hair blows around my face in a brunette curtain as I sweep it back and try to slink quietly through the grass toward the back corner of the yard. I think I can see a snippet of Grace's nightgown from here. I'm just about to dart around the tree and grab her when my foot lands in something questionable. One glance down and I see that it's a giant pile of dog crap. Shivers take over me as I cringe and try not to throw up.
Fantastic.
My parents are on vacation in Edinburgh, Scotland, so any chance of help is far out of reach. While they're at the zoo gawking at pandas and whatnot, I'll be here trying to figure out how to juggle my new job and my biostatistics classes against a sudden influx of responsibility. How many twenty-two years old inherit two children from their awful, selfish, drug addicted sister? What kind of person just up and leaves the country, abandoning their kids alone at home? Ingrid didn't even tell anyone. She left a note and said good-bye to her girls while they were busy watching Netflix.
Anyway, I'm here now and I'll figure out how to make things work—and I'll excel at it. I always do. Even if I have to sacrifice some of my dignity and self-respect to do it.
I light my chin and square my shoulders. I made the right choice in moving back here, in accepting a job that pays well, even if it's not exactly my cup of tea. Even if it sounds like hell. Ugh. Would my parents have still left the kids with me if they knew I was going to start stripping come tomorrow? Probably not. But they've been saving and planning for this trip for years. I can't let Ingrid's choices derail everyone's lives.
Somebody has to pick up my sister's mantle and forge onward.
A cold northwesterly wind whips across the yard and ruffles the branches of the redwood trees that loom above us like giants, silent spectators to this debacle of debauchery my sister's created.
I'm alone. With a three and a seven year old. Crap.
“Aunt Brooke?” Bella says from the back door, clutching the frame with small hands. Her pale pink nightgown flutters in the icy breeze from the bay.
“Yeah, baby?” I say, getting myself together, running my fingers through my tangled hair. I pick my way back across the wet lawn and pause on the sidewalk at the base of the deck. “What is it?”
“Dodger was crying and crying, so I let him out the front door to go to the bathroom.” She shuffles her feet a little. “I keep calling him, but he won't come back.”
I see where this is going.
I take a deep breath to calm my nerves.
Grace and Bella have been through a lot already, and it's my job to bring the beauty of stability back into their lives until I can figure out how to get Ingrid to move her ass back here.
Okay. Okay, I can do this.
“Why don't you help me find your sister?” I ask as I move up the steps and brush some of Bella's dark hair from her forehead. “And then I'll go look for the dog.”
“Um,” she begins, squinching up her face. I feel the blood drain from mine. “That's not everything.” Oh. Of course it's not. That'd be too easy. “Also, I couldn't sleep so I was playing a game on your phone. I accidentally dropped it in the toilet.” There's a long pause here where I start to get nervous. “With some poop.”
Poop.
On my first night. And from the seven year old.
I think I'm in serious trouble.
The second I walk in the door, I wonder what the fuck is wrong with me. What's wrong with being a heartless dick again? Why didn't I leave that phone right where it was, take my time with Kitty's sweet ass?
Ah.
I miss home already.
“I don't want you to go!” Kinzie screeches, grabbing her mother's purse from the sofa table and throwing it as hard as she can across the room. “I want you to stay.” She stomps her feet like she's Godzilla on a rampage through Tokyo, throwing her body onto the couch with another wail that forces me to stuff my fingers in my ears.
“Oh thank God, you're here!” Mercedes says, dragging a suitcase up next to my feet. “We were afraid we were going to have to miss the flight.”
My brother breezes past me with barely a nod and disappears behind the minivan. Apparently, I'm driving them to the airport, so I can use their ugly ass car. It's 'safer' than my Geo, and Mercedes has promised me that she's got thirty channels of children's music on her Spotify account. The car's all set up to play that shit on repeat! Woo-fucking-hoo.