Things We Didn't Say_ A Novel - Kristina Riggle [2]
Like mother, like daughter.
That’s another thing I’m not allowed to say.
In the kitchen, pouring Jewel a bowl of Honeycombs as the older kids loll at the table, I offer Angel some breakfast, as casually as I can. “Want something to eat?” I fight to keep my voice level and mild, like I’m only the recorded voice on the phone, giving out the time.
“Do I ever?” she spits.
I laugh, as if this is an amusing joke. I do this partly to deflect her, partly for Jewel’s benefit, since conflict gives her a tummyache.
I rinse my cereal bowl in the sink. Michael is to my left, pouring coffee. I don’t know why I bother, but I cut my eyes over to him, searching for him to meet my gaze. He glances up at me, and I tip my head toward his daughter.
He sighs and turns around, flashing me a quick, shamefaced look as he does, knowing his admonition will be too mild, too late.
“Angel, you really should eat. And watch your tone.”
Angel barely hears him and grunts at her phone, where she’s texting. She pauses to push her white-blond hair behind one ear. There are candy-pink streaks in it at the moment, though she’s promised the director of the school play she will bleach them out by dress rehearsal. She stretches out long in her chair, her body a graceful arcing swoop. She’s gotten taller in the short time I’ve known her, more graceful, too. Truth be told, she’s a stunner of a girl. Yet I’ve seen her scowl at herself in the mirror, caught her patting her stomach and fiddling with her waistband as if trying to check if she’s thin enough yet, beautiful enough yet.
I try to ruffle Dylan’s hair as I come back to the table, only he ducks my hand so I just swipe through the air above his head. I stuff that hand in my pocket.
“You’ve got music class today?” I ask Dylan.
“Yeah.”
I should know better than to ask yes-or-no questions. “What songs are you working on?”
Dylan shifts in his chair, shrugging like his clothes are making him itch. His hair, dark like his dad’s, flops over his light blue eyes, a combination that really should send the girls swooning. Maybe in a couple of years when his skin evens out and his voice smooths over again. “I don’t . . . know.” I note the pause. When he feels the stammer coming, he takes extra time to pronounce the word.
“You don’t know?” Michael interjects.
“I haven’t heard you practice in a long time,” I say quickly, interrupting his dad. Dylan used to enjoy the company when he played his sax. We didn’t talk, in fact most of the time I’d just work on my laptop, on the floor, propped up against his bedroom wall. He said it made him play better knowing there were “other ears in the room.”
“It’s okay,” he says. “You don’t have to.”
The teen kiss-off. “You don’t have to” equals “Please don’t.”
Jewel pushes her pink glasses up the bridge of her nose and announces to the table in general: “Did you know that humans have 206 bones in the body? And we’re born with more. Some of them fuse together, though.”
I’m so grateful to her for cutting the tension with her factoid, I want to sweep her up in a hug. I cross my arms instead and smile. “Yeah?”
She’s wearing a French braid today, which she must have conned Angel into doing. Apparently their mother was a whiz at complicated hairdos. I’ve never been good at that, and the first time Jewel asked me to fix her hair it took twenty minutes, and she cried all the way out the door with uneven pigtails.
“Yeah,” she replies, and I’m hoping she’ll continue her lecture but she refocuses on her cereal. She doesn’t have to be up as early as her big siblings, but she likes to be, she says. She likes to watch everybody head off for the day. Plus, she gets the television to herself after they leave until it’s her turn for the bus at eight thirty.
Dylan picks up his phone and reads a message, seeming to flinch. But then says casually, “Hey, Dad, Robert is sick today. Can you drive me?”
Robert is Dylan’s ride to Excalibur Charter Academy. EXA, the kids call it, like ecks-uh. Angel takes the bus to the magnet school in town, having won entrance with good grades. Dylan