“What?!” E and I say at the same time.
“E, tell me…tell me Mabel was not in A’s room this whole time!” I growl, scrambling out of the fireplace.
“Let me just check,” E answers, her pretty light brown face crinkling with a grimace. Funny, her voice doesn’t sound nearly as self-righteous as it did before.
I start picking up our two-story brick colonial’s living room while I wait. The floral patterned furniture I grew up with is still in use. But I don’t keep my childhood home nearly as tidy as my mother did when she was alive. Though to be fair, I spent most of my free time rehearsing for beauty pageants when I was a teen.
Whereas A and E seem to be in a never ending contest over who can leave more stuff laying around. Today’s winner is A. I pick up empty junk food packages and Mountain Dew cans, along with a recent AP Biology test he didn’t do so hot on.
Sure enough, by the time I come back from depositing the trash in the kitchen trashcan where it belongs, E’s emerging from her brother’s room. And who’s that curled up in her arms? That would be Mabel the smaller of the two gray tabbies she and A had named after their favorite boy-girl twins from the TV show, Gravity Falls.
We adopted the kittens last December, back when I thought for sure that A would be going to the University of Missouri-Rolla for Engineering and E would be enrolling in the Performing Arts program at Washington University in St. Louis. I’d wanted them to have pets to come back home to every weekend and for all their breaks.
But never underestimate the co-dependent power of twins. They both managed to exceed my expectations by earning scholarships for one of the few schools in the nation that had both an exceptional engineering program and a well-respected school of drama.
However, Pittsburgh was far away and the twins could barely take care of themselves. So I’d decided to move there with them, which would mean finding a nursing job in Pittsburgh and securing an apartment for the three of us that’s okay with multiple pets.
I’d seen a few listings near CMU, but they weren’t cheap, especially compared to Guadalajara, Missouri where we currently lived. No matter how I crunched the numbers, it looked like I’d have to sell the house to make this Pittsburgh plan work.
I’d been cool with that before. Especially since I knew that Dad’s dying wish was to bring up his stepkids as well as he and my mom had raised me. But right now, all those sacrifices I’ve been planning to make to advance their dreams taste like bitter food in my mouth.
“Mabel was in A’s room the entire time?” I ask E. “You didn’t even check there first?”
“I thought I saw her run up into the fireplace!” E insists. Her eyes fill with tears. “Please don’t be mad at me, Cynda”
I want to be mad. God, I want to be. Especially since I know crying on demand is on E’s list of questionable talents, along with applying fake lashes in under 30 seconds flat and convincing boys to dump their girlfriends for the chance to hook up with her.
But then I remind myself of all the reasons she’s so desperate for attention from boys, why she hides her natural beauty under a shell of perfect shellacked makeup, and why she has such easy access to her pain.
We’re all still reeling from Dad’s sudden death three years ago. And their mom is who knows where right now—though if I were taking bets, it would probably be in St. Louis, spending this month’s life insurance payout at the casino riverboats. She’d walked out a couple of months after my dad’s funeral, and only swanned in for random visits which she never announced.
For all intents and purposes, it’s just the twins and me. Which is fine. Now that we’ve all lost my dad, I’m determined to love and provide for them just as true blue as he would have if he’d lived.
“Guys we’ve got to remember. We’re all in this together, and we have to help each other. So right now please go find your stuff so that we can get out the door.”
“But…” they both start to protest in twin unison.
I lift both hands, already knowing what they’ll say. I’ve only been their main caretaker for three years, but I swear sometimes it feels like a lifetime. I assign them duties before they can start whining about how they can’t do this or that.
“You two get your backpacks while I go check in the garage for A’s horn.”
“It’s not in the garage!” A yells after me, his round light brown face turning red with indignation.
“Guess what! Your horn’s in the garage!” I call back over my shoulder less than a minute later. You know, after I find his case open on top of my hood and the tuba sitting bell side down on the concrete. The former marching band member still lurking inside of me, shudders at the sight.