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“Hey, Bethy! You just landed?”

“About thirty minutes ago,” I confirmed. “Who’s picking me up? No one’s showed up yet.”

My dad was silent for a moment. “I think one of your brothers is supposed to be grabbing you. Your dad and I are both at work.”

I knew my brothers were pissed I’d skipped out on Thanksgiving, but this was a whole new level of petty. Spending the holiday without them had actually been amazing; I had gonewith the guys and Joey to the restaurant, eaten good food, and taken a leisurely walk. It had been simple, but perfect.

“Well, they clearly decided they didn’t want to come get me because they’re pissed. A cab is going to cost an arm and a leg!” I growled.

“I’ll call the boys. Someone will be there within an hour!” he assured me.

Great. I had a whole hour to sit on uncomfortable airport seats.

Danny picked me up, but he wasn’t happy about it. “You could have called a cab,” he grumbled as he pulled up.

“And spend fifty dollars I don’t have? No, thank you.” I threw my bag into the cab of his truck and slammed the door behind me.

“Well, I had shit to do.”

It couldn’t have been anything that important, considering my brother hadn’t held down a job in years.

“You know Hayden is pissed that you didn’t come for Thanksgiving? You totally ruined things for him. We were all expecting you to come home, and you just abandoned us. So, yeah, everyone’s pissed,” Danny continued grumpily.

I sighed. “I told our dads that I wasn’t coming home weeks ago.”

“You’ve never missed a holiday, so why would you start now? Hayden brought the omega he’s been seeing, and thanks to you, we looked pathetic.”

I resisted the urge to snort. My family managed to make themselves look pathetic without even trying. They just liked blaming me because it made them feel better.

“What do you mean?”

“There was no meal,” Danny said, like the answer was obvious.

“You guys didn’t organize a meal?” I asked incredulously. I knew that cooking was beyond their skill set, but I assumed they would get some takeout or find an alternate place to eat.

Danny shrugged. “We all assumed you were coming home. By the time we realized you weren’t, we hadn’t done any shopping, and we couldn’t order out from anywhere. We ended up eating frozen pizza because of you.”

“I fail to see how that’s my fault. I told you guys I was staying in California.”

I was already dreading getting back to the house and seeing what state they had left it in. Looking out the window, I rubbed my stomach subtly. Nausea was swelling in my gut, and I wasn’t sure if it was residual morning sickness or nerves.

Even though logically I knew that none of it was my fault, I couldn’t help the guilt slowly washing over me. I was the one who always managed the family holidays, and this was the first time I had been away. I had made a promise to myself and to my mother when she had already passed that I would look after our family, and clearly I was failing.

Would my mother really want to see me doing this much for them, though? She’d managed to do everything and made it look so easy. Was that simply because she was an amazing woman? Or was it because I was looking at our past through the rose-colored glasses of a nine-year-old?

Taking a few deep breaths, I pulled out my phone and, thankfully, the conversation with Danny stopped as he focused on playing with the car radio while he drove.

The weekend couldn’t be over soon enough.

Naturally, the house was filthy.

Still, my heart sank as I took it in. Even as I considered what I needed to do in order to get the place in good condition again, I couldn’t ignore my exhaustion.

Why had my family never learned to do this themselves? Was it my fault for always cleaning up after them? I was pretty sure there was no changing them by that point, so I had essentially trapped myself as their maid.

The smell of most household cleaners made me nauseated, and the prospect of spending the weekend deep-cleaning the house felt like torture.

Then again, maybe this was my penance for abandoning my family over the holiday.