Change of Heart (Fostering Love 2)

“Is Shane coming up with her?” Trev asked, leaning forward to blow on the hot chili in front of him. “He’s got a deployment coming up, doesn’t he?”

“Yep,” Uncle Mike answered, leaning back in his chair. “He’s taking leave so they can come up here, then he’ll have about a week at home getting shit at the house ready before they start gearing up to go.”

“I don’t know how Kate does it,” I said, shaking my head as everyone’s attention landed on me. “‘Hey, why don’t you go play in the sand for a bit while I take care of everything back home, and then, when you get back, I’ll jump into your arms like I haven’t just killed myself for the last six months.’”

“Are you fucking joking?” Bram rumbled, glaring at me from across the table.

“No. I mean, I get it—”

“Obviously, you don’t,” Bram snapped, dropping his spoon into his bowl with a splat. “He’s carrying a gun over there. People are shooting at him. Blowing up his friends. You think he wants to leave his family for six months at a time?”

“Bram,” Liz said, glancing between us, “knock it off.”

My jaw clenched as I tried to hold back my anger. If he had let me speak, I would’ve said that I knew it was hard on Shane, too. That it was dangerous and scary. I understood it. I did. I just wouldn’t ever be able to do it.

“Please, Bram,” I hissed through my teeth, “tell us all about how much you know about the military from all your time cutting wood in the fucking forests of America.”

“Is everything a fucking joke to you?” His voice rose. “You tell Alex how much you respect his sacrifice? How about Henry? I’m sure he’d love to hear your opinion on that.”

“Oh, fuck you,” I shot back, getting to my feet.

“Sit down, Anita,” Liz ordered.

“I’m going to go—wouldn’t want Bram here to get fucking indigestion,” I sneered, glaring at Bram across the table.

“Sit the hell down!” Dan roared, dropping me to my seat without conscious thought. “We don’t talk politics at the fucking table.”

“It’s not politics. It’s—”

“Bram, I swear to Christ if you don’t shut up I’m going to lose it,” Dan warned, breathing deeply as Liz laid her hand on his arm and rubbed it softly.

My heart pounded as I stared at my chili, and I could feel tears building at the back of my eyes. I could count on one hand the amount of times Dan had lost his temper in my presence—but he’d never lost it at me. He was such a mellow guy. He loved his wife, his kids, his company, and food—in that order. There wasn’t a lot of shit that got under his skin. But talking about the military—or fighting about it the way Bram and I were—was enough to completely wipe the look of perpetual calm off his face.

I didn’t like being yelled at. I really didn’t like it.

I sat there, swallowing against the sob building in my throat, my hands trembling in my lap while everyone at the table was silent.

“There’s no one at this table that disrespects the sacrifice our boys have made for their country,” Dan said roughly after a few moments, his voice at a normal level. “I wouldn’t let them in my goddamn house.”

I bit the inside of my cheek, refusing to look at anyone. When I saw Ellie’s hand reach toward me, I flinched away, and she dropped it.

“Ani knows better than to make light of what Shane does,” Dan said. I didn’t know if that was a warning to keep my mouth shut or his way of saying that he knew I wasn’t being disrespectful.

“Sorry, Dad,” Bram said quietly.

Dinner resumed, and the family started talking again, but I couldn’t move my eyes from my bowl. I was still shaking. I couldn’t get it under control.

For so long, I’d used my smart mouth to keep people from getting too close. I’d done it my entire life, starting before I’d ever been taken from my mom. It worked. I didn’t seem like I took anything seriously, and I liked it that way. It made me funny.

I was the funny girl, not the sad foster care girl.

When I’d moved to Dan and Liz’s, my personality was already set. I was irreverent. I made jokes at funerals and laughed in people’s faces. But the Evans family seemed to like me anyway. That, in turn, had made it worse because I felt comfortable being myself there. They didn’t care if I jokingly called Trevor our token black man. They didn’t care when I told people that pretty Henry was born a girl or convinced them that Alex and Abraham only spoke Spanish, then watched them try to converse in Spanish as the twins looked at them in confusion. They didn’t care when I called them fat—even though they weren’t—and said I ended up with the wrong family because I was so much smaller than they were. They didn’t care when I referred to the logging business as Dan and Mike’s little hobby.