Page 275 of Under Her Skin

“I do?” she asks. “Do you promise,Blaine?”

Narrowing my eyes at Kent, I tell my little sister, “I promise. Whatever you need, you come to me. I’ll be here foryou.”

Kent gives me a smile and a thumb up, and I give him the bird. He’s always been that thorn in my side as the baby of the family and the guy who tries like hell to make me see my evil ways, as he callsthem.

My stores mostly employ people with disabilities. As those people are all on some type of disability government assistance, they can’t make too much money. So, I make sure to pay them only what their particular amount can be. I don’t want to mess up their assistance, afterall.

Kent thinks I’m a terrible person for doing such a thing. He calls it exploitation. I call it doing smart business. He can call it what he wants—he isn’t in charge of how I make mymoney.

Which brings me to the fact he and my sister make very little of the green stuff that makes the world go around. Kent is currently a truck driver. He hauls oil from Point A to Point B. Over and over, he does the same damn thing, day in and day out. It is a nightmarish way to make a living, if you askme.

Kate works at a daycare, taking care of snot-nosed brats every day. That, too, sounds like something out of a nightmare to me. Pops used to help them out with their bills when they came up short, which I told him wasn’t really helping them atall.

But now I guess it’s up to me to step into pops’ shoes and the role of the head of the family. It was a role I’ve never wanted, but he’s left it wide open and empty. With the way my little sister is holding onto me, I can see I’mneeded.

Chapter2

BLAINE

Walking into our father’s home without him greeting us at the door like he’d always done is more than odd. The home that was once small and cozy feels empty. Even though there are the same things in it there have always been, it feels empty withoutpops.

“I hate this,” Kate whines as she flops onto his old, threadbarecouch.

I asked my father on several occasions to let me buy him a house, but he was full of stubborn pride and would never let me. I gave him a Cadillac last year. It was the first thing he ever accepted from me. He had always wanted one, and I suppose, when I gave it to him for Christmas, he let a bit of that foolish pride slip away so he could drive the car he’d always dreamed ofowning.

I recall feeling a spark in my heart that Christmas day when he finally accepted something from me. It felt good. Most of the time I feel a whole lot of nothing. It’s better thatway.

“So now what do we do, Blaine?” Kent asks as he opens pops’ little fridge next to his easy chair. “Beer?”

I nod and he tosses me a cold Natural Light beer, then Kate holds up her hand for one, too. The three of us sit and all of us pop the beers open and take long drinks. The resounding,ahh, fills the room, making us all smile as we had all decided to make the sound our father would make after his first drink of beer after a long day atwork.

“I wonder what in the world the Bar-B-Que Shack will do without pops to cook all of their meat for them. He was the absolute best at it,” Katesays.

“I wonder if there're any leftovers in the kitchen icebox,” Kent says and gets up to go andsee.

I’m anything but hungry. But I can see my younger siblings need the normalcy to help them get through this. “If there’s not any, I can call in an order and have itdelivered.”

Kent calls out from the kitchen, “No, I want pops’.” The sound of bottles being moved and things being shuffled around as he digs through the refrigerator tells me he’s digging deep to find any leftovers. “Ha! Yes, I foundsome.”

“You have no idea how old that is, Kent. Don’t eat any of that,” Kate shouts at him, then gets up to go inspect the food our little brother is about to put into his mouth, nodoubt.

I get up and follow her to make sure the idiot doesn’t eat something that might kill him. We’ve had enough tragedyalready.

Kent is smiling as he holds up the box with a date from three days ago written in black Sharpie across the top of the white Styrofoam lid. “Today is the last day to eat it. Come on—it’s brisket, pops’specialty.”

“Are there any beans in there?” Kate asks as she takes over the search in pops’ fridge for things that will remind us ofhim.

I give in and say, “If there’s potato salad in there, pull it out too. I like the way the old man made thattoo.”

While Kent puts the meat on a plate and pops it into the microwave, Kate finds beans and potato salad, then pours the beans into a bowl and places it on the counter. “Zap these next, would you, babybro?”

“Sure, I can handle something this easy,” he says, then takes another drink of his beer. “Do you guys remember the first time we got into pops’ beerfridge?”

“My ass still hurts,” I say with alaugh.

Kate laughs as she puts the potato salad in a bowl and places it on the table. Since everyone else is doing something, I decide I need to help, too, and get up to get us some plates, silverware, andnapkins.

“He did get you two boys the worst. I was crying before he ever spanked me. When the actual spanking came, I hardly felt it, but it didn’t stop me from wailing like a banshee,” Kate says as she takes a chair. I place a plate in front of her and put a spoon in the potatosalad.