“Are we counting?” Porter asked.

“Porter, really. Your cholesterol,” Anne-Marie said low.

“I’m fit as a fiddle,” he declared.

She gave me another head shake, this one meaning men and their delusions about their health.

“You know, this isn’t all that brilliant, now you got a woman to gang up on us with,” Porter pointed out, not missing the shaking head, or, it seemed, the message it sent.

“Finally,” she shot back, and to me, “You can imagine,” she said that last word in a dire tone, “me and four boys in my home. It does not start, nor does it end, with their proclivity toward the f-word, let me tell you.”

She gave a fake shiver.

It was a good one.

At that, I let myself start laughing.

“I’ve been absolutely living for the day when my sons found women so I’d have a break from all…things…man,” she finished.

I laughed harder.

My phone started ringing.

“You loved every second of it,” Porter claimed.

“I don’t when one of my boys says the f-word around me,” she replied as I got up to get my phone.

“Mom, give it up. I’m a guy. I curse. I don’t gamble, cheat or steal. Consider yourself lucky,” Boone said, bringing his mother her latest cup of Nespresso.

He was also a son who brought his mother coffee, and that had to count for something.

I mean, seriously.

I loved these people.

I stopped smiling at them and checked my phone.

My heart twinged.

Angelica.

I hadn’t heard from her since she hung up on me, what was it now? Weeks ago?

In the meantime, Mom had reported that Ang got a “job” working for a friend who had an Etsy business that was taking off and she needed someone to do the packing and mailing so she had more time to design stickers or carve placeholders or whatever.

It was part-time. Cash under the table (probably so Angelica could still fleece the government for whatever she got from them). And, in my opinion, totally bogus.

Mom’s take: “At least she’s trying.”

My take: It was horseshit.

But no one asked me, and I wasn’t in it anymore, so it had nothing to do with me.

Now she was calling.

Word on the kids was nil. Portia was apparently back at school. From what I knew about how Brian was, Jethro would always be Jethro, someone there to take care of him, even if it wasn’t a parent.

And I was out of it and doing my best to pretend I didn’t miss them, but I couldn’t do anything about that now anyway, just in case they wouldn’t be safe because I wasn’t safe, so as ever…onward.

And again, she was calling.

The phone quit ringing, I stared at it so long.

But as with Angelica anytime she wanted something, it started right back up again.

Or it could be something bad with the kids.

I snatched up the phone, turned to the Sadlers to see two of them were looking at me with friendly curiosity, one had his brows drawn, and I said, “Sorry. I have to take this. Just a sec,” and moved toward the bathroom.

“Hey,” I answered.

“Your brother is at the hospital,” she declared. “They’re discharging him today, then he’ll go to jail since he’s already been arrested, though he was so drunk, he probably doesn’t remember that. And he’ll need to be bailed out. I’m no longer in this. I don’t have any money, no matter what you think. But even if I did, I wouldn’t give it to his drunk ass. And he’s not seeing his children until he gets his head out of that ass. And you can tell him I said that. And you can also tell him not to even try to come over here if he’s still drinking, or I’m calling the cops.”

Halfway to the bathroom, I’d stopped dead on the word “hospital.”

“He’s in the hospital?” I whispered.

“Hit a parked car while driving. No one was hurt but him. He wasn’t wearing a seatbelt and hit his head real bad, fucked up his arm, got all torn up. They thought he might have a concussion so they kept him overnight. Now that they’re releasing him, he’s fucked, and just to say I’m glad. Maybe this will mean he’ll wake the fuck up.”

I had questions, about a billion of them, but I didn’t get them out before she kept rolling out her vitriol.

“And just so you know, since I’m done with him, so I get to be done with you, it wasn’t easy, losing Brian. It wasn’t easy, getting pregnant so early and not having a life. All my friends having fun and doing stuff. Going to school. Starting jobs. Getting apartments. Getting all dressed up and going out clubbing. And I was home and fat with Portia or changing dirty diapers and my husband was drinking himself to sleep. So maybe I wanted to have a little bit of fun. Maybe I wanted to be normal. Or pretend for a while. And not have some bitch get up in my face because she doesn’t get it. All I did was fall in love, and the next thing I know my life is in the toilet.”

Honest to God, I didn’t have time for her shit.

So I cut through it, asking, “Does Mom know?”

“I’m not going to tell your mother her son is this huge of a fuckup. June is a decent lady. Or at least she has always been decent to me.”

“What hospital?”

“Swedish.”

I hung up on her and whirled, bumping into Boone who was so close behind me, he was almost on top of me.

I tipped my head back.

“My brother had an accident. He’s at Swedish Hospital.”

“Grab your bag, baby, let’s go,” he replied instantly.

I raced to my purse.

When I started back Boone’s way, his mom had her purse on her shoulder and both his parents were heading toward the door.

“We’ll come with,” Porter decreed.

Nonononononono.

“I don’t—”

“We’re coming with you, doll,” Porter said gently, but firmly.

Doll.

Boone had a dad who called his son’s girlfriends “doll.”

I wanted to cry.

I didn’t because Boone’s hand closed warm and strong around mine and I got my shit together.

We had a low-key argument about who was sitting in front of Boone’s Charger, which was solved when Anne-Marie hustled to the driver’s side to get in back that way, Porter gently set me aside before he folded in back of the passenger side, and Boone actually did the cop move of putting his hand on the top of my head and folding me in the front.

Boone had us on the road for about a minute before I stammered, “My brother has…he has a, well, a problem. And he was drinking before the accident. No one else was hurt,” I said the last super quick.

“That’s okay, honey, yes?” Anne-Marie said, leaning forward and patting my arm. “Right now, let’s just get you to the hospital and get you to your brother. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Did whoever phone you tell your mother?” she asked.

“Uh…n-no. No.”

Yup.

Still stammering.

“Would you like me or Boone to phone her, or can you do that?”

“I haven’t really, well, you know, decided if—”

“Call your mother, Kathryn,” Anne-Marie ordered gently.