“So!” Danny said, leaning back against the counter and cracking open his can of soda. I noticed Brooke was still standing in the spot where she’d first come into the room, shifting her weight on her high heels back and forth from foot to foot. “Tell me things! What’s been going on?”
“Well,” I said, raising an eyebrow at Danny. “You might need to get a refund on your wedding planner.”
“What happened to Clementine?”
“She skipped town,” Linnie said.
“Embezzlement,” J.J. added.
“What?” Danny asked, looking around at all of us. “Is this a joke?”
“Nope,” I said, pushing myself up to sit on the counter. “We found out this morning, and—”
“Who’s Clementine?” I looked back to see Brooke still standing in the doorway, smiling as she asked this. I glanced over at her, annoyed. Because this—us—all of us together, joking around and talking, it was what I’d been looking forward to for months. And it was getting derailed by this girl in our kitchen, the one who shouldn’t have been there and was only getting in the way.
“She’s the wedding planner,” I said shortly, then turned back to my siblings. “Guys, should we have a General Grant Meeting at some point this weekend?”
“I thought all five of us had to be here for a GGM,” Danny said, taking another drink of his soda.
“The wedding planner quit?” Brooke asked, but J.J. was already talking over her.
“All five of us are here,” he said. “Mike’s back. He came for the wedding.”
“Really.” Danny glanced at Linnie, who nodded. “How’s that been going?” Then he looked around, like he was just now noticing Mike wasn’t in the kitchen. “Wait, where is he?”
“Staying at Jesse Foster’s,” Rodney responded.
Danny’s eyebrows flew up. “And how’d that go over?”
“Not great,” J.J. and I said in unison.
“I bet,” Danny said with a short laugh. “Jeez. Remember that one time—”
“Mike’s here?” Brooke asked brightly, and we all turned to look at her. “I’m glad I’m going to get to meet him. I wasn’t sure, because Danny said he wasn’t coming, because there was a . . .” Her voice trailed off, and her cheeks turned pink. “I mean,” she said, speaking more quickly now. “Just that Mike and your mother—”
“Did I hear the alarm again?” my dad asked, pushing through the kitchen door that Brooke had left ajar. He stopped and smiled when he saw Danny and pulled him into a hug. “Our firstborn! When did you get here? Good trip?” He must have noticed Brooke then, because he took a step back, and his eyebrows flew up.
“Oh—hello,” he said. “Are you Clementine? Did you change your mind and come back to us?”
“No,” Brooke said, her voice rising slightly. “I’m—”
“This is my girlfriend,” Danny said smoothly, widening his eyes slightly at my dad. “Brooke. I told you about her.”
There was only a tiny beat before my dad said, a little too heartily, “Of course, of course. Welcome. I’m Jeffrey Grant. Very nice to meet you. I think Danny told us you have a business selling cookies online.”
“What?” Brooke frowned, and looked at Danny. “I—no.”
“She doesn’t,” Danny said, looking hard at my dad, clearly trying to tell him to shut up.
“No, you told me,” my dad said, missing this as he wandered over to the counter and helped himself to some celery sticks from the veggie tray. “I was so impressed—it was that app? All about how people can get fresh cookies delivered whenever they want? What was it called?”
“I . . . don’t know,” Brooke said.
“That’s not Brooke,” he said. “That was . . . someone else. Brooke’s a doctor.”
I looked over at her, surprised. Maybe it was just that my doctor was a middle-aged woman who always wore sneakers, but I wasn’t used to doctors looking quite so glamorous. But maybe things were different in California.
“Well, that’s very nice,” my dad said, nodding. “Good for you! You’re actually making a difference, unlike my layabout children.”
“Hey,” Danny, J.J., and Linnie said together.
My dad shot them all a grin, then turned to Danny. “But what was that cookie business called? This is going to bug me now.”
“Crumby Service,” Danny muttered after a moment, and my dad broke into a smile.
“That’s right!” he said, chuckling. “So! Brooke. How long are you in town? And where are you staying?”
“We’re staying here,” Danny said. “We’re here for the weekend.”
“But it’s your sister’s wedding this weekend,” my dad said, frowning.
“Right,” Danny said, shooting me a glance, clearly wanting me to help. Our dad was one of the leading botanists in his field, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t be incredibly slow on the uptake sometimes. This had migrated into his character in the strip, Geoff, an absentminded professor who was always losing things, which Waffles the beagle would inevitably find.
“They’re coming to the wedding,” I said, making my voice upbeat and cheerful. “Isn’t that great?”
My dad looked over at Linnie. “Did you know about this?”
“It’s—fine,” Linnie said, even though it sounded like she was speaking through clenched teeth. “The more the merrier, right?”
“Not for a wedding,” J.J. muttered.
“Well—welcome,” my dad said, giving Brooke a smile. “We’re very happy to have you.”
“I, um,” Brooke said, turning around and reaching into a paper bag, which she’d set down by her feet. She stood up, holding a very ugly-looking plant in her arms—it mostly looked like someone had put a bunch of twigs in a decorative pot. “I brought this for you. Danny’s told me so much about your garden, so I just thought . . .” She held out the plant toward my dad.
“That’s not a Parrot’s Beak?” he asked, patting his head, then bringing his glasses down to look at it more carefully. “Truly? How unusual. Thank you so much.”
“Apparently it takes a while to bloom. But if you plant it now, by this time next year, it should be in flower.”
There was a silence in the kitchen, as my dad looked down at the plant. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat. “That’s a nice thought.”
“You can always plant it in your new garden, right?” J.J. asked, his tone more upbeat than usual.
“I’m sure that . . . wherever I end up, I’ll have a garden there. And I’m sure it’ll look lovely.” He shot Danny a look, but it was over before I could read into it.
My parents hadn’t yet bought another house—they said they were waiting until the escrow closed. But I also hadn’t asked them any questions about where we’d be moving or what the house would look like, mostly because if I didn’t talk about the fact that we were going to leave this house, maybe it wouldn’t happen. Talking about it—about logistics and specifics—would make it real in a way I didn’t yet want to deal with. There was a piece of me that knew this was elementary school logic, but I couldn’t help it. And even though I knew rationally that I couldn’t blame her, I found myself glaring across the kitchen at Brooke—she had brought up the one thing I really didn’t want to think about this weekend.
“Anyway,” my dad said, setting the plant on the counter and walking over to the alarm panel, “did this go off again?”
“Yeah,” J.J. said, shaking his head. “And we really need to have a talk about what you picked for your alarm code.”
“It’s twelve thirty-four,” I said. “What’s the big deal?”
“Just think about it,” J.J. said. I did, and realized what he was talking about a second later.
“The alarm code is one-two-three-four?” I asked my dad, who just shrugged.