Page 74 of Shake the Habit

“Well, there it is,” she announced. “Y’all have finally gone and—”

She was watching what she said, but you couldn’t change everything about yourself. “Aunt Paula, do not talk about our sex life,” I warned, cutting her off.

“As long as you’re admitting that it exists,” she said, and chuckled.At her heart, she wouldn’t change, but she could polish off rough spots or maybe even chip out any serious imperfections, as you could with a gemstone that wasn’t ersatz.It was just like how I was still the same Kayleigh, but better after some work.

And she did do an admirable job with self-restraint, although I was certain that she wasn’t the only person in my family withsomething to say. After we dropped off Sir and attended church, we drove over to Aubree and Wyatt’s. It was a lot like I thought Caleb’s place could be in the future: a farmhouse that was cute and non-scary. It was full of McCourts who grinned at me and did things like hit Caleb in the arm, telling him that he was a lucky man.

“I am,” he kept answering them, very seriously. Then he would look at me and smile and I nearly swooned.

“KayKay, I’m so happy for you,” Aria said and she got tears in her eyes, because that was Aria.

“I’m so glad you got that bra set,” Cassidy added. “The three of us are doing pretty well, aren’t we?”

“We are,” I agreed, and we hugged each other. We really were.

With a cooler of leftovers loaded up, Caleb and I got ready to meet Marc and Sir and find out what they had been up to. His mother and sisters had their suspicions already.

“Taygen,” Michaela stated. “Apparently, she told him that she wanted to see Sir today.”

“She’s always welcome to visit him at our house,” I said. “Unless Sir isn’t the only thing she wanted to see.”

“Obviously, she’s using your dog as a blind to creep up on Marc. Like Birnam Wood!”

“Uh, that does make sense. It’s fromMacbeth,” Caleb said to me, and that made sense, too. Their branch of the family had always been very literary. “We should read that play when we’re done withHamlet.”

“We haven’t gotten very far with it,” I reminded him, and he blushed because the night before, we’d done things besides reading and then this morning, those things had gone even further. He was so cute that I had to kiss him, and multiple members of my family whistled.

But it was time to go, and my parents were clearly concerned. They pulled me to the side as Caleb waited with Aunt Paula on one arm and the cooler under the other. “It’s a wonderful thing,” I assured them. “He’s a very stable and normal person. You don’t have to worry about him.”

They nodded but their expressions didn’t change, and I understood that Caleb wasn’t the problem.

“You don’t have to worry about me, either,” I continued. “But I know you will because you love me. That why I worry, too, like about Cassidy’s baby and if Sir’s diet has enough calcium, and if dogs need calcium. Before, I gave you so many reasons for concern but I won’t do that anymore, I promise. I’m going to be perfect.”

“We’re not trying to punish you for the past, Kayleigh,” my mom said, and my father nodded.

“We also don’t expect perfect, baby,” he told me. “We’re going to try hard to let go some.”

“Maybe that should be the deal,” I answered. “We’ll try our hardest. I’ll do everything I can to deserve your trust, as well as your love.”

“You already have both,” my mom said, and we all hugged to seal things.

“Good,” Aunt Paula said as we left. She breathed out a deep sigh. “That’s enough.”

“Do you mean that you’re glad to get away from the family?” I asked her.

“It’s always a bit of a relief to be back in my house, where it’s nice and quiet. No large dogs,” she put in, and I saw Caleb smile. “But I meant that I’m glad your parents are going to let up on you. It’s not good for anyone to fret that much.”

“I certainly don’t want to cause more problems for them,” I answered fervently.

“I’m talking about you and how you worry about them,” she said. “You’re so concerned about what everyone in this family is thinking about you, but I could tell you a story about every single one of them.”

“Really?” Caleb asked her. “Like what?” But then he shook his head. “Better that I don’t know,” he said as she opened her mouth to share.

“There’s a lot of McCourt lore going back generations,” she went right on, ignoring his last statement. “There are so many secrets. Some are no good but some don’t matter a fig, not anymore. Why wouldn’t we talk about how, when her children were all grown, my great-grandma McCourt left her husband to live with her best lady friend? They weren’t only friends,” she continued. “They used to call those kind of relationships ‘sapphic.’ What’s the harm in saying it now? It won’t bother her or anyone else how they lived out their days happy together.” She related some other tales about olden-times McCourts, like their illegal stillsand various crimes. Then she got into a very surprising story about a relation who’d tried to set up his own country on an island in the South Pacific. It hadn’t worked.

“I never knew any of this,” I said, amazed, and it was certainly more pleasant to hear about my great-great…was there one or two more greats in how that grandmother had related to me? Anyway, it was better to learn about the distant cousin who wanted to be royalty on an island, rather than Aunt Paula going on about some of the more recent secrets in our family. She started to work her way toward the present, though, and I shook my head.

Caleb glanced at me in the mirror, and he seemed to agree that we were skirting too close to the secret I had kept, the one that had hurt me so much. “I don’t know much about my family,” he commented to turn the conversation.

---