When I glance down the street none of the other houses on this side of town are particularly well kept either. This is the ‘rough’ side of town, if a town like Raston can have a rough side.
Mostly it means that poor people live here. The town is split nearly in half by a long wide Main Street where the basics are: post office, bank, hotel, bar, Patsy’s Grill, the grocery store and the general store. Behind Main Street on the East side are the government buildings, and on the West Side the industrial buildings. This town was built around forestry. Almost everyone who lives here works with trees in some form. Logging, or Parks, or Wildland. My family was split half in trees, half not. I work wildfires, Jet does construction, and my little sister Pris works for Parks Canada. But Zeke is a mechanic, Del’s a bartender, and Tabby works part time at the grocery store.
I rock back on my heels still hesitating to walk into my family home. I haven’t been here in a while. My mother and I donn’t really see eye to eye. She blames me for my father leaving, but it’s hard for me to care when I know she’s better off. Even hating me.
Today is even harder because I have to tell them about Millie. They need a warning and a set of strict guidelines and boundaries because they’re my family. They will find a way to fuck this all up for me.
The creak of the screen door lets out a waft of fresh bread and I know Tabby’s baking again. Her obsession with food started when she was three and a few years ago she graduated from play kitchens and easy bake ovens to the real thing and I’ve had to run an extra five kilometers ever since.
The front porch is full of shoes scattered from one side to the other. A long plank of wood lined with hooks attached to the wall is so full that some coats slipped off onto the floor. The whole thing makes my eye twitch, but I don’t live here anymore, and I promised my sisters I’d get off them about their unhealthy attachment to shoes and impractical coats.
The music leaks out from under the door—the angst pop beat and nasally singing of Tabby’s favorites. I wonder how she managed control of the speakers today. She has Zeke wrapped around her finger but Del and Pris aren’t as easily manipulated by her big dorky glasses and freckled nose.
“Hello?” I call and from out of nowhere a Nerf football hits me straight in the chest. By nothing more than instinct I catch it and hurled it back in the direction it came.
Zeke catches it one handed, a dumb grin on his bearded face. I’m not used to my baby brother being a grown man, mostly because he still had the mind of a thirteen-year-old.
“Nice of you to drop by, Asshole.” He tucks the football beside him and goes back to shoveling cereal into his mouth. He must be home for his lunch because his face is smeared with grease and he’s still in his coveralls.
“Get the fuck off the furniture with those things on,” I sat snapping my fingers. It’s a diehard habit I have that I’m sure will never leave me. When shit goes down in this house all eyes end up on me to do something about it. It’s been this way since I was about eight years old. So naturally that authority extends to all aspects of Ryker life with six children a deadbeat father and a mother high on painkillers and God.
Zeke flips me off but he listens. He grumbles as he stands and moves through the long, crowded living room and through an ornate archway, missing half its molding and plopping himself down at the ten-seat dining room table that Jet built when he was nineteen.
Feet pad down the stairs behind me and Pris fluffs my hair.
“Hey big brother,” she says, weaving around me wearing her dark green Parks uniform, her long brown hair tied back in a ponytail.
As I smooth out my hair, Del comes out of the kitchen from the opposite direction and mimics Pris. She fluffs my hair and bumps me with her hip. She looks like the evil twin of Pris. Both dark hair pulled back but Del is in bar uniform, tight tank top, painted on jeans, leather coat, make up from her hair line to sparkles that disappear into her cleavage. Her feet are bare but as she hurries out the door with toast between her teeth, she’ll slip into her cowboy boots because she’s as hillbilly as this family ever gets. Smart as sin running the hotel bar better than anyone ever could, but I never understood why she plays up the dumb girl thing. I asked her once. She told me to go fuck myself. We’re classy like that, us Rykers.
“Bye big brother,” she says through her toast filled teeth. She winks at me and it feels like a wink of encouragement. Jet and Del already know about Millie. But I have to wrangle my other siblings to tell them, then I have to tell Mom, who I’m guessing is in her room. She almost never comes downstairs and only when everyone else is gone to work or school.
I step into the kitchen and it appears like an explosion of baked goods burst from the oven and landed on every flat surface. I glance at my baby sister, her glasses slipped down her nose, flour in her purple hair, her cheeks flush from leaning over a pan of boiling red goo that I assume is fruit. Her blue eyes are darting around as she stirs the goo. Tabby runs at warp speed all the time. The faster she moves the harder she’s being hit by her anxiety. I started in on her when she turned sixteen and didn’t sleep for six days until she became delirious and dangerous. The doctor sent her to therapy where she was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. She still sees her expensive Vancouver therapist via FaceTime once every two weeks, I know because I get the bill. Another reason I need to get back to work. Jet took over payments until I can get my life sorted but I hate it. I should be able to take care of her.
“Tabby,” I say, and she snaps out of her trance. A huge grin forms making her face half glasses and half teeth. Her smile is basically what kept me going for the last eighteen years.
“Xan,” she squeals and jumps on me, throwing her arms and legs around me like she used to when she was a kid. I stumble back, wrapping my arms around her and laughing.
Tabitha spent more time on my hip as a baby than on Mom’s or dad’s. When she had a bad dream, she called me. When she needed help, she asked me. When she was stuck on her homework or in a fight with a friend or got dumped by a guy for the first time, she called me.
“Jesus, kid. You are way too big to be doing that. I’m old now.” I shake her off me and she goes back to her fruit goop. “How are you?”
Her features droop a bit, but I know her. The more excited to see me she is the stormier it is in her mind. That and she seems to be baking for a celebrity wedding.
“Lyle left yesterday.” She stares at her concoction, her stirring getting more aggressive. Lyle was her boyfriend, an army boy and a bad influence if you ask me. Personally, I’m happy he left, but I keep that shit to myself. I give Tabby a sympathetic squeeze on the shoulder.
“That guy was a fucking douche,” Zeke pipes up, dumping his bowl in the sink.
“You’re a douche,” Pris snaps back, shoving Zeke’s shoulder. Zeke smacks her hand, her toast falling to the floor peanut butter side down. Zeke laughs, and Pris’s eyes turn to black daggers, her fists clenching. I quickly step between them.
“Point proven,” she fumes. I gesture to the ground.
“Pick it up, then grow up.” My stern voice is rough on my throat and I don’t remember the last time I had to use it. “Then make your sister another one.”
“Dad’s home,” Zeke mumbles but again he listens. I tense at the words for so many many reasons.
“I need to talk to you three. It’s important, so look at me please.”
All three of my siblings pause, because this voice is also one I don’t use often. The serious, for real voice. With all eyes on me I get nervous and take a heavy breath, sliding my hands in my pockets.
“Briggs is back in town,” I start and get three very different reactions. Tabby gleams with excitement, still apparently head over heels in love with her. Zeke’s confused because he’s an idiot, and Pris is angry. Pris and Briggs never really understood each other.
“What does that have to do with us?” Zeke’s confused expression comes out on his words.
“She didn’t come alone. She brought her nine-yea
r-old daughter.” My voice gets stuck, because it’s our daughter, not her daughter. Ours.
Zeke’s features sink deeper into confusion, Tabby blinks rapidly, her stirring slowing as she thinks, and Pris is the first catch on with an audible gasp.
“No fucking way,” she breathes out and I nod.
“No fucking way what!” Zeke throws out his arms. Tabby clues in with a pop of her eyes.
“Is she yours?” Tabby vibrates.
“Your what?” Zeke huffs.
“Oh my God, Zeke!” Both my sisters shout at him at the same time and this is the pure chaos that is my life. This is where I feel on. This is how every moment of my existence has ever been and for the first time in months I forget about my work trouble.
“You are seriously the dumbest human on this planet,” Pris says poking him in the forehead. “The kid is Xan’s. Briggs left ten years ago. After Xan knocked her up and she bailed on him like some entitled rich bitch.”
The expression on my face does its own thing without consulting me first. Everything settles into a frown and I stare down my sister.
“You have a kid?” Zeke finally joins the conversation but Pris and I are too busy locked in stubborn battle. “Why are we just finding out now? I thought she had an abortion. Isn’t that what you told us?”
“She lied, obviously,” Pris challenges me with her tone.
“She was lied to. So was I. Her mother came to see me and told me Briggs took care of it, but immediately went to her to tell her that I said I wasn’t interested in being a dad or being involved at all. She died that night and Briggs’ dad sent her to Vancouver to live with her aunt. She apparently called here to tell me our daughter was born but Dad hid it from me.”
“God, you two are ridiculous,” Pris rolls her eyes and snatches her toast from Zeke’s hands. “Like some melodramatic Romeo and Juliette shit. It’s exhausting.”
Pris weaves around us and I let my anger flood me. “Emilia is your niece, Pricilla. This affects all of us. If she wants to meet you, you will be respectful.”
Pris spins around, her eyes wild. “You do realize that you’re not actually my father, right?”
She storms out, slamming the door behind her.
“I think it’s so romantic,” Tabby says with a wistful sigh in her voice. Zeke and I exchange a knowing glance. We’ve all done a tremendous amount of work to make sure Tabby didn’t have the childhood that rest of us did. But sometimes it made her blissfully unaware of the harsh truth of the real world.
We stand silent the kitchen slowly being filled with the smell of burning fruit.
Tabby eventually startles and yanks the pot off the stove.
“Dangit,” she dumps the whole pot in the sink with a clatter and tears fill her eyes.
“Go get ready for school,” I say taking her by the shoulders and pointing her toward the stairs. “I’ll deal with this.”
The stairs creak as she disappears to the second floor, leaving Zeke and me and alone in the kitchen. I gather up all the dishes and stack them next to the sink. My brother leans on the counter watching me.
“So, did you meet her?” he asks. “Your kid, I mean.”
“I did.” I’m sure what to say after that. Zeke and I don’t talk feelings. We actually don’t talk much at all unless he’s doing something dumb and I’m telling him to stop.
“Is she staying?” Zeke asks the question I’ve been avoiding since the moment I set eyes on Millie out at the acreage.
“I don’t know.”
Zeke pushes off the counter and claps my shoulder.
“Well, good luck with that, buddy.”
I’m left completely alone as silence falls on the house. Zeke goes back to work, and Tabby gives me a quick kiss on the cheek before she heads to school. It’s me and the sound of dish water sloshing in the sink and the clunk of dishes as I stack them on the counter.
Eventually the shuffle of my mother’s slippers on the hardwood pull me from my trance.
“Hey Ma,” I say, drying my hands on a towel and leaning on the counter. She’s wrapped up in my dad’s bath robe which swallows her tiny frame whole. Her thick dark hair is back in a bun at the base of her neck. Her features are sunken and tired, but she’s still young. She is young. Not quite fifty.
“Son,” she responds, grabbing milk from the fridge and closing it with a reverberating thud. Her energy is flat, and you’d never know that we haven’t spoken in months by the way she moved around me like I’ve always been there. Jet’s the one that manages Mom because I can’t keep my patience with her like he can. He maneuvers around her moods with dexterity and she doesn’t make it a secret that he’s her favorite son. He’s the son that takes her to church every Sunday. Mom is devoted to God and Jet is devoted to Mom.
I want to shake her until she stops pining after Jason and realizes what a useless ass he is. She never will and that’s what I can’t accept.
“I came by to tell you something before you hear it at church.” I tuck my hands in the pockets of my hoodie and resolve to put it out there.
She pauses her task to look at me for the first time.
“Briggs is back in town and she has a daughter. The kid is mine.” I quickly run over the main points about her and Mom’s brows lower into a frown.
“Your father would never do something like that,” she says, completely brushing over everything else. “Deception isn’t the Lord’s way. Your father is loyal to the Lord.”
I close my eyes and suck in a slow deep breath to calm the spiking frustration inside me. Of course, all she hears is the part about Dad and then defends him while making it about Jesus.
“I just wanted you to hear it from me.” I force the words through my filter, leaving out all the things I really want to say.
Arguing with my mother is impossible so I don’t. I step up to her, kiss her on the hair and leave.
#
Chapter Ten
BRIGGS
"Mom!" Millie's voice carries up the stairs, her tone of impatience rivaling a full-blown teenager. "We're going to be late."
I roll over in bed and tap my phone. It’s ten after nine. We’re hardly going to be late for an eleven am practice. Amusement washes over me as I stretch my body and yawn loudly when a ping on my phone takes my attention.
An email to my personal account from my assistant with the subject: Should I be concerned?
I opened it quickly and skimmed her words.
Hey Briggs,
I've been able to clean up most of your inbox. It's safe for you to get back in there! J
But there's one email address that's been sending multiple emails a day chronicling how they are going to find out who you are.
Should I be concerned?
There's no indication they are even close to figuring it out.
Thanks,
Leslie
Nasty emails of upset customers demanding to know who I am aren’t new. I’m accused of hiding behind Instagram because I know I make a shitty product. Or they say I must be too fat or too ugly to show my face, as if that's the worst thing a woman can be. That I can only be successful or strong or smart if I’m also thin and conventionally beautiful.
Fuck convention.
I toss my phone on the bedside table and call for Millie.
"Get up here, kiddo!" I holler and hear her shoes on the wood steps like an elephant marching. She appears in my doorway with a mouth full of banana, her baseball cap on backward and bright purple neon leggings under a loose and faded t-shirt. Her hair isn’t braided yet and waves stick out in all directions under the cap.
"Wha?" she sat with sticky banana in her teeth. I wave her over to my bed and she sets the peel on the nightstand before climbing into bed with me. I wrap her up in my arms and know that these days are numbered—her willingness to cuddle with me, even her ability to cuddle with me. She's already almost my height.
She'll be tall like her dad. My heart kicks up at the thought. A strange mix of being happy f
or Millie to get to know her father and sad for me because now I have to share this girl I’ve spent every moment with since the day she was born.
"You still want to go?" I ask and she tilts her chin to frown at me. A little laugh escapes my throat and I kiss her forehead. "Okay then. I'll get up. But we still have like two hours, so don't rush me."
I purse my lips with a teasing raise of my brow. She knows I don't function until my third cup of coffee, and now she’s going get to see that her need for order, control, and stability comes from the other half of her DNA.
Millie jumps up, forgetting her banana peel and stops in the door, her grin playful. "An hour and a half."
She giggles and scoots from the room when I throw a pillow at her.
#
The keys jingled as I flip them in my palm, standing by the front door with a travel mug full of coffee, and a belly full of toast. After all her 'we're late' talk, she can't find her baseball glove.
"Did you check the treehouse?" I ask, glancing at the clock. We need to leave within five minutes if we were going to make the twenty-minute drive into town.
"Yes!" Her exasperated voice rushes around the corner and I narrow my focus in on her, the mom instinct rearing.
"Attitude, please." I set down my coffee and join her in the search for the glove. She’s frantically rushing around yanking pillows off couches and zigzagging through the room. I stroll calmly through the living room and kitchen to open the back door. As I scan the yard and deck, the soft brown leather catches my eye immediately.
Good Lord, did she even use her eyes?
I snap it up and pause in the doorway feeling little prickles along my neck, like the other night. The air was calm, the mountains sturdy, the trees silent. It’s the silent trees that send shivers along my spine. When the trees go quiet, the songbirds stop singing and the squirrels stop scampering, and the leaves stop rustling with life. That's when you know you aren’t alone.
Millie appears in front of me and I gasp in fright, having gotten lost in the gravity of the forest. My daughter yanks the glove from my hand and dares to tell me to hurry up.
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