For a moment, I felt the old anxiety.
Was it Mom?
Dad?
Another relative demanding explanations?
Then I turned the phone facedown without answering.
Paige noticed.
“Everything okay?”
I listened to the crickets and the laughter coming from the yard.
“Yes,” I answered. “Everything’s fine.”
Emma climbed onto the porch beside me.
“Aunt Marissa?”
“What is it, sweetheart?”
She pointed toward my house.
“Do we live here now?”
Paige went quiet.
Tyler looked up.
The question reminded all of us of the night my sister stood in my penthouse and announced that she’d taken possession of it.
But this time, nobody was angry.
I brushed a curl away from Emma’s forehead.
“No, sweetheart. You visit here. Then you go home to your own house.”
She thought about that.
Then she grinned.
“I like that better.”
“So do I.”
Because we’d finally learned something our parents never taught us.
