His Brown-Eyed Girl

“What?” he shouted, stomping onto the area rug.

Charlotte froze.

“Where are your brothers?”

She didn’t say anything. Just looked at him like he had horns. Like he might be looking over the plumpest parts of her for his nighttime meal.

“Michael!” He called up the stairs.

No answer.

Kermit, the ancient golden retriever, slunk past, quickstepping it toward the kitchen and back door.

“Oh, no,” Lucas muttered, glancing at Charlotte. “Is that dog pee?”

She slowly nodded. “I stepped in it. Gross.”

Chris came in holding a large plastic storage bag filled with ice, sank into the leather recliner and propped his ankle up, plunking the ice on his bare foot and grabbing the remote control. “Looks like Kermit the Dog peed again.”

Lucas closed his eyes and counted, throwing in a Hail Mary and the Serenity prayer for good measure. When he opened his eyes, the things he couldn’t change were still there. Dog pee, three-year-old and a ten-year-old watching Cinemax.

“Hey, turn that to a kid’s channel or something,” he said, giving Chris the same eyeball job his father had given him when he sneaked off to watch shoot ’em up movies.

“But it’s PG-13. No sex or nothin’.”

“You’re not thirteen. You’re barely ten. Turn the channel. Now.” Lucas skirted the pond of pee and looked at his niece who balanced on one foot.

“It gotted on me,” she said by way of explanation.

“Of course. It’s nearly time for your bath, so we’ll take one early, okay?”

“’Kay. Can I have frooty-ohs for dinner?” she asked, allowing him to lift her. She didn’t even shudder, but she didn’t hold on to him, either. Maybe they were making progress. “You weally ain’t a monster, are you?”

“No. I’m your uncle. Your daddy’s older brother. I’m just big.”

Her blue eyes didn’t blink.

“You’re little. Does that make you a fairy?”

She smiled and something near the rock that was his heart stirred. Felt like gas but not as sharp. “Like Tinkerbell?”

“Who’s Tinkerbell?”

The little girl relaxed against him as he climbed the stairs. “You don’t even know who Tinkerbell is?”

Music blasted from behind Michael’s closed door. Lucas knocked but got no response, so he kept moving toward the kids’ bathroom. Courtney had obviously taken pains to make it bright and kidlike, but the boys seemed to care little, tossing their socks, undies and wet towels on the floor and leaving streaks of toothpaste in the sink.

“Here. I’ll start your bath then I’ll get Michael to help you while I clean up the mess Kermit made.”

Charlotte balanced on one foot, holding aloft a tiny foot with chipped pink polish on her little toenails. “’Kay.”

Lucas banged on Michael’s door.

No answer. Of course.

“Michael!” Lucas raised his fist to pound on the door once more but it jerked open.

Music battered him and an angry thirteen-year-old with sullen brown eyes met him. “What?”

Lucas lowered his fist because the kid’s eyes darted to it and there was a hunted look in them. “I need you to bathe your sister.”

“That’s not my job. I did my homework and took out the trash. Plus, I already wiped her and put her pants on.”

“Fine. I’ll bathe her. You clean up your dog’s pee. Use the steam cleaner.” Lucas turned toward the bathroom.

“Fine. Whatever. I’ll bathe the flea.” There were equal parts disgust and resignation in Michael’s voice.

Good. Lucas didn’t want to bathe Charlotte again. The first night she’d sung songs about spaghetti at the top of her lungs and insisted on using something called Dora the Explorer shampoo...which he could not find. He’d also thought she’d bathe herself, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Seems he was supposed to bathe her. And it felt weird because he’d never washed a little girl before. Big girls and a bottle of bath gel? Sign him up. Little girls with Strawberry Shortcake soap and a Mardi Gras party cup to rinse her hair? Not so much.

He’d take dog pee any day of the week.

Chris quickly changed the channel when Lucas entered the room so he tossed him another Father Knows Best stern look and went in search of the paper towels stored in the half bath under the stairs.

Fifteen minutes later he stood in the kitchen looking at the retriever who sat innocently at the back door, tongue lolled out, happiness pouring out of sweet brown eyes. He sort of wanted to kick it...and he sort of wanted to take it for a walk. Or maybe fishing. He’d always wanted a dog to take fishing.

“Out, Kermit. And don’t piss in the house again.”

The dog lumbered out into the fenced yard. And the Wicked Cat of the West darted in.

Mittens. Meaner than a two-headed snake.

Lucas sighed and leaned his head against the smooth painted wood of the door.

He needed help.

He didn’t know what in the hell he was doing as evidenced by being yelled at in the carpool line while picking up Charlotte from school. Sister Regina Maria had actually scared him...and she was barely five feet tall.

Why did he tell Courtney he would come to New Orleans and watch the kids?

Of course, he knew the answer. But it was complicated...and tied around the fact the brother he’d once loved and now hated was teetering on the precipice of death. Nutshell.

But all the other shit he felt cluttered around that reason made it harder than he’d ever thought to be here in the world he’d left behind.

Long ago.

Courtney’s voice. Please, Lucas. I know you hate me, but please. I don’t know what else to do. I have to be with Ben. Have to. Please, he’s your brother. This is me begging you.

Words he’d longed to hear, but never in such regard. He’d wanted to punish Courtney. Wanted her to grovel. To regret. To know what she’d given up.