Page 30 of Opposites (Never) Attract
“Not my job to tell you anything, Sunshine. It was only my job to bring you home.”
“Sunshine, come inside,” my mom said, waving me toward her. “We can talk in the living room.”
I looked again at Tag, trying to read something in his expression, but he gave me nothing.
I walked towards my mother with heavy legs. Sick of this feeling, this old Smarty Sunshine feeling of always waiting for some shoe to drop. Bracing for some new torture coming my way. So what if there was some bad news? I ate bad news for breakfast. Bad news was a major part of my job. And I was fucking excellent at my job.
I put my chin in the air and remembered who the hell I was.
“I go by Kaitlyn, now,” I said. Mom looked at me like I didn’t even make sense. “As a name. People in New York…they call me Kaitlyn.”
“Honey,” she said, and after ten long years, she wrapped me in her arms, pulling me down against her. Sudden and strange tears bit into my eyes. She smelled the same. Patchouli and Earl Grey Tea. “You can call yourself whatever you want, but the first time I looked into your face after they pulled you from my body and put you on my chest, I knew you were nothing but Sunshine.” She leaned back and looked into my face. The tears in her eyes made me nervous. “Now, let’s go inside and get this done. It’s about time.”
Tag
I watchedthe whole family follow Monica Calloway into the house after Sunshine. I knew, of course, what they were going to tell her. What Monica had been too scared to tell Sunshine her whole life.
I didn’t like the word coward, and it wasn’t a term I would use to describe Monica, who was as much a force of nature as any of the Calloway women.
But, it was cowardly that she never told Sunshine that Leroy McGraw was her biological father.
“Thank you for bringing her home,” Ethan said, coming down the steps toward me, rather than going with the clan inside.
I shrugged. “Sunshine chose to come for her own reasons. All I did was put the idea in her head and give her a ride.”
Ethan had been my best friend growing up. My partner in crime, and I was thrilled he was back in The Gulch. He turned and we stood side by side, squinting up at the house.
“Sometimes it’s hard to believe anything good can come out of what my old man had planned.”
“You and Harmony,” I told him. “That’s good.”
“Yeah, that is good.”
There was no denying the bone deep satisfaction in his voice, and I was happy for him. I really was.
I wasn’t one to pine. Or think about shit like the future and family. My dad was getting on me about the whole thing, a wife, grandchildren, and all that bullshit. And, every time he did, I reminded him that none of that had gone so well for him, so what was there to recommend it to me? I remembered my mom and dad fighting. Iremembered Mom crying. I sure as hell remembered her leaving. I remembered the long days I was left to my own devices while Dad worked, before I was able put on the work gloves and work alongside him.
There had been times, I felt like collateral in a fight I never asked for, and certainly never wanted.
The work was what you could count on. The work and the animals and the land – that was satisfaction for me.
Marriage was for other people.
“She should have been told,” I said, not that it mattered now. “When she wasn’t a kid anymore, she should have been told.”
Ethan didn’t have any control over that, I knew. Like everyone else, he only found out a couple weeks ago he had a half-sister.
Ethan lifted a brow. “When has Sunshine ever been a kid?”
Amen to that.
“How do you think she’s going to take this?” Ethan asked.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” I said. “But, one thing I do know is, you lot better be good to her. She’s been treated like an outsider in this town for too long.”
I felt Ethan looking at me like I’d stunned him, but I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t care what he thought, what mattered was how that family treated Sunshine now that she was family.
The front door to the Lodge crashed open, rattling the glass in the windows.
