hugged me and wept. Her bely poked between us—she
was pregnant with Arthur, then. If she suspected I wanted
to marry Austin as much so I could move out of the house
as for passion, she didn't say anything.
When we told his parents, his dad said nothing and his
mother's eyes dropped to my waistband. She didn't ask
me if I was pregnant, and she must have been surprised as
the months of our marriage passed and my bely stayed
flat, but no matter how she might have felt about the
prospect of me as a daughter-in-law, the idea of a bastard
grandchild must've been worse.
I wore a thrift-store wedding dress and Austin wore a suit
of his dad's we'd paid the dry cleaner to take in. In
pictures, my thick black eyeliner and my spiked black hair
make me look pale, wan. Tired. Scared, even.
The truth is, I was happy.
We both were, I like to think. At least at first. Austin went
to work for his dad's construction business, and I kept up
work at my mom's shop. My granddad had died and it
was hers, ful-time, and now that she had Arty, she
couldn't spend as much time with it, so I managed the
shop.
We were happy.
And then, we weren't.
Chapter 07
When I was younger, the prospect of Sunday dinner at my
dad's had so excited me or stressed me out I'd vomit.
Never at my father's house—even when I was little I knew
Stela wouldn't approve of a puking kid. I didn't puke
anymore, but I'd never managed to get rid of the knots in
my stomach, either.
I popped an antacid tablet now as I sat in my not-
expensive-enough-to-be-impressive car in their half-circle
driveway of stamped concrete. This was the fourth new
house my father'd had in the past seventeen years of life
with his second family. Before that he'd lived in a stately
Georgian-style half mansion with his first family. He'd
never lived with my mother.
Birth-order studies claim that an age difference of six or
more years between siblings complicates the normal
oldest, middle and youngest personality traits by also
making each child an only. That's why, though I have five
half siblings and an uncle who's more like a brother, I'm an
only child. I've tried identifying with being the middle kid—
but what it comes down to, in the end, is I'm not.
The door opened and Jeremy and Tyler ran out. They
both favor my dad, too. Al of us look more like siblings
than we were raised to be. I was fourteen when Jeremy
was born, sixteen for Tyler. They're more like nephews or
cousins than brothers. I'm not sure what they think of me,
