Page 10 of Holding On To Good

That lone eye appeared again. “Mushroom and potato hash? With fried eggs and hollandaise sauce?”

He nodded. “And chocolate chip pancakes for Ian.”

“You’re making Ian get up this early, too? On the first day of summer vacation? You monster.”

That was him. Mr. Evil, asking their seven-year-old nephew to get up early for chocolate chip pancakes. Arm the masses with pitchforks and torches and run him out of town.

“Just making sure the kid has something to tell his future therapist.”

“Oh, he’ll have plenty to say, believe me,” she said, the voice of experience when it came to living with unreasonable, overbearing, demanding adults.

She also had a point. One that worried Urban. No matter how hard he, Miles, Toby and Elijah tried to make up for their brother Silas’s absence in his son’s life, it might not be enough to keep Ian from feeling abandoned.

Urban was afraid they wouldn’t be enough.

One problem at a time, he reminded himself.

“Miles brought donuts from St. Honore’s,” he said, trying to tempt her with sweets from the local bakery.

“Make me a plate. I’ll eat it for lunch.”

“You’re down to nine minutes,” he told her.

She sighed the sigh of the long-suffering—drawn out and so forceful he was surprised the covers didn’t inflate with air. “You’ll have enough people gathered around the table. You won’t even miss me. And it’ll be good practice for when I’m no longer around.”

“That’s why you need to join us. So we can enjoy your presence while you’re still here.”

“You make it sound like I’m dying. God.”

She wasn’t dying. But she was leaving in three short months to attend Ohio State University, four hours away, where she would finally be free of her older brothers and their despotic rule.

That was an exact quote.

There were times that magical day couldn’t come soon enough for Urban.

Usually when she used words like despotic.

But lately, more often than he’d have ever thought possible, he found himself wishing time would stop altogether. Or at least slow down so he’d have her around just a little while longer.

And he’d nail his own thumb to a two-by-four before he admitted it.

“Consider attendance at breakfast mandatory,” he said, “and part of your punishment for coming home after curfew.”

Whipping the covers off her head, she jackknifed up to sitting. Urban stepped back. Kept his eyes averted. Sweet Jesus. Medusa with her crazy, snake-like hair was alive and well and in his sister’s bed.

“I shouldn’t even have a curfew,” Verity said. “I’m an adult now, you know. Says so right there on my diploma. I’m a bona fide summa cum laude graduate of childhood.”

“Part of being an adult is being on time, which means coming home at midnight—”

“My curfew is two.”

“Your curfew was two. It’s back to twelve.”

“Are you serious?” Before he could answer, she gave a very unadult like eye roll and flopped back on her bed. “Ugh. Of course you’re serious. You’re always serious.”

“Making sure a person becomes a responsible, contributing member of society is serious business.”

One he’d gone to great lengths to excel at since their parents died when he was twenty, leaving him in charge of his four teenage brothers and five-year-old sister.

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