Page 5 of House of Deceit

“And if you live?”

“Probably go see my parents, I guess. What about you?”

“Caleb has a birthday party to go to. Luckily, J.D. is going to take him. It’d be unfortunate if I threw up on a toddler.”

“I feel like it would be payback, honestly.”

“Still frowned upon,” she reminds me.

“Yup. Okay, so up on three?”

“Ten.”

“You got it.”

I count to ten and we slowly hoist ourselves off the floor like arthritic octogenarians. Courtney leaves as I turn on the water for my shower.

I feel slightly more human once I'm clean and have brushed my teeth, but still need sunglasses in my apartment.

The taxi pulls up outside of my childhood home. My parents’ house is a small shoe box. The green of the house is faded, the paint peeling off. The shutters are more gray than black, and the porch covered in flaking white paint. I don’t believe my parents have done a single update in the almost twenty-nine years I have been alive.

“Mom? Dad?” I call out, as I let myself in, pushing my sunglasses on top of my head.

Wearing her favorite ruffle-edged floral apron, Mom steps into the entry between the living room and kitchen.

“Charlotte? What are you doing here?”

My mom is a soft woman. Both in stature and in voice. But her spine is straight steel, and when it comes to protecting her daughter, she is the fiercest person on the planet. I let her wrap her arms around me as I sink into her embrace. Sniffing the air, I ask, “Are you making cinnamon rolls?”

“Of course. It’s the fifteenth of the month.” My mom is as steady as the sun and lives her life by a book that only she knows. I could set my watch to her routine. Unfortunately, she didn’t give me that trait, but she gave me her blue eyes, red hair, and sense of humor.

“I forgot. Is Dad here?”

“Oh, he’s puttering around out in the garage. Why don’t you go out there and get him for me? We can have cinnamon rolls and coffee. And maybe then your hangover will decrease enough you can stop squinting at the light.”

The fact that my mother misses nothing is just as annoying now as it was when I was a teenager. I give her a sheepish smile as I make my way through the house and out the back door. The detached garage sits about twenty feet from the back door.

“Hey, Dad,” I call out as I move into the garage. He rolls out from beneath the ‘67 Chevy Impala he’s been tinkering with since I was a teenager, clad in faded blue overalls covered in various liquids and stains.

“Lottie Lou. Give me the five-eighths socket, will you?”

I move toward my dad’s toolbox and grab the piece he needs. He slides back under the car and the tinkering sounds resume once more.

“Mom wanted me to tell you that the cinnamon rolls are ready.”

“Sounds like it’s time to go inside.” He pulls himself out from under the car once more and sticks his hand out for me to help him to his feet. We are eye to eye as he stands, my height and lean frame coming from him.

“How’s Courtney doing?” he asks, nudging me.

“She looks worse than I do,” I smile. The little tufts of white hair circling my father’s head are pulled out in every which way. The longer he’s in the garage, the crazier his hair looks.

“I hope you girls had fun.”

“Too much, probably.”

He slips his hand around my elbow, and I let him lean on me.

“There’s no such thing,” he says.

---