“Not yet, but if my dad’s driving, I’m sure they’ll get here ahead of schedule.” We both laugh at the truth. My dad has points on his license from speeding tickets, and I’m pretty sure he’s banned from ever taking traffic school again. If he hasn’t learned his lessons by now, he’s hopeless in the eyes of the law.
“What’s on your agenda today?” She loops her arm with Zack’s, squeezing his bicep while he eats his breakfast at the counter, his back strategically to me. He stiffens at her touch, and the cold shoulder leads her to sag her arms and let her hand slip away.
“Someone hit the car. Jay’s dad owns a garage though, so . . .” He turns his head enough to convey he knows exactly what happened.
“Oh, no! Does your dad know? We have insurance. Did the person leave a note?” My aunt’s questions barrel out, and I take a longer than normal sip of my coffee in an effort to hide my smile. I feel a little guilty because in the heat of the moment I didn’t consider that my aunt and uncle would be the ones paying for the damage. My uncle does make Zack work in the summer to help pay for things, though. That’s my guilt loophole, and I take it.
“No note. Fucking coward,” Zack says, shoveling the last of his pancake into his mouth. He rushed through breakfast to get out of here. Good.
My aunt smacks him lightly on the back of the neck for his swear, and he halfheartedly apologizes while dumping his plate in the sink. My cousin won’t call me out for being his hit and run in front of my aunt. The information I have is a lot more damaging. And now that I let that notion simmer in my mind, I realize I’m going about this all wrong. It isn’t my uncle I need to talk to; it’s my aunt.
I’m patient, waiting for Zack to guzzle down his juice and rush out the door to drag his cracked-up car to Jay’s house. When my uncle comes down and joins us for breakfast, I let him tell me what he knows about tryouts, what he’s heard is on the agenda for Monday and Tuesday. I play along while he makes his own predictions, noting the way he always puts Zack in the starting catcher’s job, reminding him of Hollis only once.
“Yeah, she’ll make the team, I’m sure. I mean she has to, right?” He easily dismisses her talent, assuming daddy’s girl is only there for one reason. Fury builds in my chest because of how clearly I now see it all. Hollis lives with this, and now that I see that double standard, I realize it exists everywhere.
My aunt clears the table and does the dishes all on her own. She works as an intake specialist for high end orders at a lumber yard six days a week, yet her weekend time is somehow not as sacred as my uncle’s. My mom was always the one to take off for everything when I was little—when I got sick, when I had appointments, when I needed to go somewhere for travel baseball. My dad got to show up for the big things, be there for game time. Often his chair was ready and waiting for his ass to sit in it. When my mom was finally promoted to IT director at the financial company she works for, it was a big deal that she was a woman—the first woman. It took her eighteen years to move up to a salary my father got to in five. My uncle, my dad—they don’t live the double standard on purpose. I don’t think they see it because it’s routine for them, but I bet there are times when my mom and my aunt do. I bet they’d like things to be easy just once.
I wait for my uncle to leave the room before I broach the subject with my Aunt Meg.
“What do you think of Hollis?” I’m not sure why this is how I break into this subject, but I know it’s the right choice by the way my aunt settles her gaze on me as she finally sits at the table to drink her own damn cup of coffee in peace.
“She seems like a pretty strong girl.” She stares at me over the top of her cup while she sips. She knows more than she lets on, she just doesn’t dive head first into the drama. I can learn a lot from this woman.
“Yeah,” I agree, hugging my now-empty cup between my hands while I lean forward across from her. I tap my fingers against the ceramic while I ride the mental teeter-totter of what to say next. Telling my aunt about her son’s behavior puts the burden on her, something else I realize about this situation.
My struggle, though, is with what’s right. What Hollis is enduring isn’t. That much is certain, but am I taking the power away from her by starting this chain reaction? My aunt will confront my uncle. Together, they’ll confront Zack. My cousin will blame me, and the issue will get tied up in this ugly knot that never leaves this house.
But I promised her I wouldn’t tell her dad.
“You know, sometimes, Cannon . . .” My aunt busts into my circling thoughts and I glance up to find her knowing smile waiting, her tongue held between her teeth as she taps her own nails against her mug. “All a person needs is someone in their corner.”
I breathe in her words and lean back, letting them settle around my busy mind. She doesn’t know the full breadth of what happened. She would be deeply disappointed in her husband and son. I have
