Page 73 of The Burning
“Ugh. I hope not, but wouldn’t be surprised if he got his way. He always does.” I made a grossed-out face. I wished things didn’t come so easily for our father—even just this once.
“Maybe Estelle’s from a loaded family and one of her parents died and left them an inheritance.”
I shook my head. “No way. If she was from a rich family, she’d never put up with Dad.”
Austin laughed, covering his mouth to keep our speculative gossip down. “True. Maybe he took a life insurance policy out on her and is going to off her,” he whispered and pushed his hair back, tucking the longer bits at the sides behind his ears, a habit left over from childhood. “Or maybe it’s the opposite,” he added.
I was laughing now, too, even though our humor was twisted. We got that from our mother for sure. I pushed his shoulder. “You sound like Mom, making up stories,” I told him.
We both laughed a little, but the blanket of loss covered us within a few seconds, and we fell silent.
His white hoodie had a tan smear by the neck that looked like makeup. I hoped he wasn’t worrying about hooking up with women right now. Worse, I hoped the makeup had rubbed off on the hoodie while my brother—not Kael—was wearing it.
“That’s Kael’s, right?” I pulled the cotton collar at the base of his neck.
“How did you know?”
I stuck my nose in the air and looked toward the kitchen to make sure Estelle wasn’t lurking. “I know everything, haven’t you learned that by now?”
My brother, with a mature and rare tone, leaned his head close to mine. His blue-eyed gaze poured into me, and I swore I could read his mind, so I wasn’t the least bit surprised when the words came out. “What’s up with you two? I know something happened when we all were camping.”
I reached for my nearly empty water glass. “Nothing.”
It was Austin’s turn to push me. “Bullshit. Martin’s miraculously become pleasant to be around the last few days, smiling and shit. I’ve never seen him check his phone so often and I know y’all slept in his truck together.” My brother raised his brow.
“Tell me whose makeup is on your shirt first.” I pointed to the evidence.
Austin’s face went pale as he looked down at the mark.
“Please, for the love of God, tell me you haven’t been seeing Katie after all the trouble she caused.”
He shook his head so fast that I thought it would fly off. “Nah, nah, nah. But I’ve been wearing this outfit lately, not him, so stop being jealous,” my brother teased me. “Actually, the jealousy kind of suits you, so keep it up.”
Saved by the bell . . . well, the cake.
Estelle had her hands full, carrying a medium-sized cake in covered in white icing with more piped icing and pearly candy around the bottom edges.
“We got you two a little something for your birthdays. Nothing big. Just a cake and ice cream,” she said, setting the cake on the table. Our dad trailed in slowly behind her, and returned to his seat at the head of the table, placing a tub of Neapolitan ice cream directly in front of his placemat.
The reflection of the candle flames lit up Estelle’s face as she passed the lighter, one by one across, all twenty-one of them. When she was finally finished, she began to sing “Happy Birthday.” My dad’s voice was lazy but after twenty birthdays with him, it would have broken the tradition if he’d acted excited. Austin was smiling and singing along, and I mouthed the words, to be polite. I thought about all my different birthday memories, from my mom dancing around the kitchen with a jar of store-bought icing, letting us dip our fingers into it and getting high on sugar before school, to my most recent favorite just last weekend with Kael clapping along and Gloria hugging me.
At the campsite I felt calm, warm, and seen. In this stale house, I just felt itchy and uncomfortable and out of place. Relief washed over me as the birthday song finally ended. I tried not to make eye contact with anyone as I let Austin blow out all of the candles. He found the humor in continuing to have to blow and blow, but I was too emotionally drained to care to even try.
Estelle smiled, proud of her little show. Even my dad seemed to enjoy the moment as he handed her a cake knife.
“Ladies first,” she said, half smiling as she slid a piece of the cake onto the clean porcelain plate in front of me. At times she was sort of sweet and I could tell she was really trying. I simply thanked her, continuing my attempt at being nicer to her.
“Happy birthday,” my dad said. “I can’t believe you two are going to be twenty-one. Man, I can remember the day I brought you home. We kept mixing you up the first couple days.”
It was a nice sentiment, but my dad slipping on the mention of “we”—something he was normally very careful about, usually preferring to ignore the fact that my mom ever existed—caught me off guard. I really, really didn’t like when he brought her up, even without using her name. I didn’t know which would be worse: being the ex-wife who was still missed and pined after, or being nameless in conversation, an obliterated ex. The latter felt worse, like being an old couch you had memories with, but no attachment to as you put it on the curb and replaced it with a brand-new IKEA one.
“What did you to wish for?” Estelle asked.
“I wished for a car,” Austin joked, dipping his finger into the icing, like he did with every cake, whether it was his or not. “And world peace,” he added.
“And you, Karina?” my dad asked me.
I wanted to ignore him. It was hard to decide whether I should be sarcastic or genuine with my response. I had a million reasons to be pissed at my dad right now and after years of playing nice, I had reached my threshold. For the last few years, I had tried to work to internally resolve my anger toward him, but he didn’t make it any easier.
