The F-Word

Beside me, Casey breathes out one word. “Wow,” she says, and brings her hands together in what might be either prayer or applause.

Bailey’s eyes are wide. For a heartbeat, her lips curve upward, but the smile is hesitant and fades as she fixes her gaze on me.

“Matthew?” she says. “What do you think? It this all right?”

The correct response is to say yes, it’s fine, we’ll take it.

But I don’t say anything.

What I do is rise to my feet, walk straight to her, cup her face in my hands and lower my mouth to hers.

12

We get out of the store, out of the mall. I do not make eye contact with Casey.

“Well,” I say briskly, “it’s getting late. Thanks, Case…”

“Thank you doesn’t even come close,” Bailey says, flinging her arms around my sister. The women hug.

Then it’s my turn.

Casey lets go of Bailey, steps up to me and puts her arms around me. She rises up on her toes and puts her cheek against mine.

I’m sure it looks like a gesture of sibling love.

It isn’t.

She puts her lips to my ear.

“Remember the time you were eight and I was ten?” she whispers. “You told Billy Hamilton I had a crush on him and I beat you up.”

“Yes,” I say brightly, “you were wonderful.”

“I can still beat you up, bro. I do yoga. Pilates. Tai Chi. I can see to it that your ass is grass.”

Carefully, smiling as if she said something vastly amusing, I clasp her shoulders and put her from me.

“Not on your best day.”

She throws back her head and gives a big, phony laugh. “Oh, you’re funny!” Then she leans in again. “I also took a self-defense class. They taught us that kneeing a guy in the balls can take him down real fast.” This time, she pulls back without any help from me. She laughs again and pats my cheek. “So keep that in mind this weekend, okay?”

I tell her to kiss my niece for me, say hi to my brother-in-law, and I then I grasp Bailey’s arm and hustle her away.

“What was that about?” she asks as we head for my car.

“Oh, just some sisterly advice.” I dump the last armload of boxes into what passes for a rear seat in a Corvette—by now, it’s jammed to the roof with stuff—and get behind the wheel.

“Advice?”

I nod, start the car, and back out of the parking space. “You know. Bread-and-butter plate is to the left, wine glass to the right, dessert fork’s above the plate. Don’t do anything to embarrass the family name. That kind of thing.”

The deception works. Baile

y smiles and says that if we end up seated with her Uncle Alan, none of that will matter because he’ll grab the wrong plate, the wrong glass, the wrong fork and then everyone else will have no choice but to do the same thing.

“My kind of guy,” I say, and we keep the banter going all the way back to the office, where I pull in next to Bailey’s car and we get out of the ’Vette so we can switch all the packages to her trunk.

Then we look at each other.