Page 42 of Sunsets & Slow Dances

I was weighing the pros and cons of online vs. in-person shopping as I made my way around the truck and into the driver’s seat. The biggest pro of online was not having to drag a six-year-old who hated shopping almost as much as I did into a store to try on clothes. But the online column had a big con; without trying on the clothes, I had no way of knowing if they would fit, which meant I’d have to do returns, and that was a pain in the ass.

“Look!” Matty enthused behind me as I pressed the ignition button.

I turned and looked over my shoulder. Matty was holding up one of the pictures he’d painted. I was pleasantly surprisedat the quality of his self-portrait. Whatever they were teaching, it worked. This wasn’t your typical child’s drawing of a generic round face, round eyes, hook nose, exaggerated smile, and one-dimensional brown hair. This portrait had layers; it had dimension.

“Wow.” I was genuinely impressed. “That is really good!”

“And I made a family one!” Matty pulled out the other paper.

Once again, I was surprised. This time it wasn’t just the quality of work that had me taken aback; it was also who was included, or should I say who wasn’t. There were five people in the picture and eight animals. Myself, Matty, Chloe, my mom, Buzz, Bandit, Betty, Shadow, and all five chickens.

“Why didn’t you draw your mom?”

“She’s notrealfamily,” he explained the same way he would if he was saying Bandit was a dog and Shadow was a horse; it was just what they were.

Hearing him say that caused my heart to drop into my stomach. I looked at his face, searching to see any hint of what he was feeling. His expression matched his tone, matter-of-fact.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, she’s notrealfamily like Gammy and Buzz and Chloe; she’s justsometimesfamily.”

My heart broke hearing him say that. We’d only been staying with Buzz, my mom, and Chloe for two weeks, yet he considered them ‘real’ family and didn’t put his mom in that same category. I don’t know why I thought that Felicity dipping in and out of Matty’s life hadn’t affected him. I guess it was because he never asked for her. He just accepted that was how it was because it was how it had always been.

Being back home, with my family, on the farm, opened my eyes to the fact that I’d been checked out of my life, operating my life on autopilot for the past ten years. But I was checked back in now, and I needed to make some changes.

15

NADIA

“What wasmy brother like when you guys were together?” Chloe asked as we pulled out of the Artistic Horizons parking lot. “Was he always so grumpy?”

Is that what he was? Grumpy? That wasn’t how I would describe him. So the million-dollar question was, how would I describe him?

“Have you seen The Vampire Diaries?”

She nodded.

“He was like Damon and Stefan, broody, not grumpy. Basically, if you combined Damon’s charm and charisma with Stefan’s empathy and moral code, that was your brother. He was serious when it came to people he cared about and sports and school.”

Which wasn’t entirely his fault. Chuck Knight set unrealistic standards for his son, and Callum felt the pressure of having to live up to them. Nothing Callum ever did was good enough for his father, and Chuck made sure everyone knew that.

“I don’t think he wants to be here, in Firefly. I told him I can take care of myself. I have friends that I can stay with.”

“Believe me, Callum doesn’t doanythinghe doesn’t want to do. If he didn’t want to be here, he wouldn’t be.”

His stubbornness was why it was so difficult to break up with him that final time once I knew I’d have to move back to Firefly after graduation. It was why I’d had to take such drastic measures to make the breakup stick. Because I knew he wouldn’t listen to me if I told him to stay in Arizona and continue his career.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see Chloe picking at her nailbeds, which was a habit I used to have when I was anxious. I clearly hadn’t put her mind at ease. I wished I could say or do more to reassure her, but I didn’t want to say the wrong thing, especially after spying on Callum and overhearing his conversation with Peanut. The siblings clearly had a lot to work out, and I didn’t want to do anything that might get in the way of that.

I wondered if I should give Callum a heads-up that Chloe had spoken to me and let him know that she thought he didn’t want to be here. Was that betraying her confidence? Or was it betraying him not to tell him?

I was still battling with that decision when Chloe asked, “How old were you when your mom died?”

It didn’t surprise me that Chloe found out my mom died. The first year after she passed, I couldn’t count how many people told me about other people who had lost a parent. “You know Julie lost her dad in a motorcycle accident,” or “Kevin lost his mom to a brain aneurism,” or “Summer’s mom died when she was eighteen from a heart attack.”

For some reason, people felt the need to share with me the names and tragic circumstances that gained me and others entry into the exclusive club that no one wanted to be a member of.

“I was a lot older than you,” I explained. “I was twenty-six.”

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