But I could swear, even with the distance, I saw the white flash of Joe’s grin. I didn’t know him very well but, if asked, I would have said it wasn’t physically possible for Joe to grin.

Then he folded her in his arms, enveloping her with his large body and his head came down, hers tilted back and they started making out.

A sharp pain gripped my heart.

It hurt to watch. It hurt a lot and yet I couldn’t tear my eyes away.

There was something about his big body in his dark clothes, his powerful arms around her, holding her close to his long frame, enfolding her in a way that was about sex (or leading up to it, probably) but looked like more. Maybe safety, protection, his dark head bent to her blonde one, all of this, for some reason, cutting me clean to the bone.

I wanted that for me. I missed that, God, did I miss it and I wanted it back and it felt, in that moment, I’d never have it again.

And that fucking hurt.

I tore my eyes away and as silently as I could so Joe wouldn’t hear, I closed the door to my car and walked to the side kitchen door. I was about to insert my key when the door was thrown open from the inside, the light switched on, Keira and Kate stood in the frame and they shouted, “Surprise!” at the same time I felt a strong arm curl around my belly from behind. I was lifted clean off my feet and whirled in the air.

I screamed, loud and piercing, my knees going up, my fingers curling around the arm at my waist as I was whirled yet again by whoever had me. Kate and Keira ran out of the house and jumped around us in dual teenage girl excited tizzies as we twirled.

We stopped moving and my feet were planted on the ground when I heard my brother Sam say softly in my ear. “How’s my big sister?”

When I heard his voice, I screamed again, this time loud and joyous, turning in his arm and throwing my arms around his neck. I held on, kissing his cheek, his jaw, his neck, jumping up and down while I did this as Kate and Keira, their arms around both of us, jumped up and down too, also screaming loud, ear-splitting, teenage girl squeals of delight.

Sam stopped hugging me so he could wrap all of us in his arms and his head tipped back so he could shout, “These are my girls!”

I looked up at my brother, his beautiful face; his warm, brown eyes; his light brown hair (that needed a cut, I noted) and my hands slid from his neck to wrap around his waist, I planted my face in his chest and held on tight.

“Most beautiful girls in the world!” Sam kept shouting. “That’s right! Drink it in! Sheer gorgeousness!”

I tilted my head back because he seemed to be talking to someone instead of shouting at no one and I saw his head turned to the left, toward Joe’s house.

My head turned that way too.

Joe and his woman, not locked in a make out session but instead simply standing close to each other, were looking our way.

“No female on earth prettier than this pack!” Sam declared. “You hear what I’m sayin’?”

I looked toward Sam. “Honey –”

He ignored me, still addressing Joe and his companion who were still watching Sam’s show. She was smiling, I could tell. Joe was not.

“You’re fine, must admit,” Sam tipped his head to Joe’s female friend, “but nothin’s finer than my girls!”

Keira giggled. Kate got up on her toes to kiss his cheek. I started pressing my huddle toward the kitchen door. My brother Sam was also tall and he was no slouch, he could probably hold his own with, say, Morrie, Feb’s brother. I doubted he could last a round with Security to the Stars and he might buy a round if he talked about Joe’s woman like that.

“Let’s go inside,” I coaxed.

Sam wasn’t done with Joe and his friend though. I knew this because he felt the need to announce to them, “Havin’ dinner with my family. All fuckin’ right!”

“Sam!” I snapped, finally forgetting Joe and his partner. “Hello? The f-bomb is off-limits around teenage girls.”

“Mom!” Keira cried. “They say it at school all the time.”

“Maybe so but they don’t say it in my driveway or,” I looked at Sam, “in my house.”

“Relax, shit,” Sam smiled, dropping his arms but turning and throwing one around my shoulders as he used his other hand to guide both Kate and Keira into the house in front of us like he herded teenage females for a living.

“Shit’s off-limits too,” I told Sam and he looked over his shoulder toward Joe’s house.

“Violet’s uptight! I’m here five minutes and she’s lecturing me,” he shouted and I shoved him through the door, turned toward Joe’s and started shouting myself.

“Sorry, really sorry, show’s over!”

“No probs!” the woman shouted back good-naturedly.

Joe seemed to be staring at me and he didn’t say a word.

I scooted inside and closed the door.

“He texted me!” Kate told me practically before the door closed. “At school, said he was coming to town and wanted to surprise you.”

“Took a long time gettin’ home, Vi-oh-my, waited frickin’ forever,” Sam noted. “What, you live at that garden center?”

“I was doing overtime,” I answered as I shrugged off my corduroy coat. I turned to put it on a hook by the door, an action which served double duty of allowing me to avoid the look Sam gave me.

“Uncle Sam made his world famous spaghetti carbonara,” Keira announced. “I was lookout. We shut off the lights when I saw your car on the street.”

I turned again to look at the kitchen and saw that my brother did make spaghetti carbonara and he also made the mess that came with it.

Kate rushed up to me and grabbed my forearm, pulling down on it, informing me, “He’s staying a couple of days. He’s gonna meet Dane.”

Lucky Sam, he was going to meet the awesome Dane.

“If that’s cool with you, Vi,” Sam said.

Like he had to ask.

It was cool with me. It was cool he stayed a couple of days or a couple of years. That wasn’t loneliness speaking. That was how much I loved my little brother.

“That’s cool.”

“Excellent!” Keira shouted.

“I’ll get the stuff for the pull out,” Kate offered then ran from the room.

“Keira, honey, set the table,” I told my other daughter.

“Sure,” she agreed, moving to the cupboard and Sam got close to me.

“We’ll talk about overtime after dinner,” he said quietly.

My eyes shifted to the side and up, caught his; I nodded and walked into my house.

* * *

We ate spaghetti carbonara at the dining room table and I only felt a twinge of hurt when Sam sat in Tim’s chair instead of beside Keira where he usually sat one of the million times he was around for dinner when we lived close to him in Chicago. I wondered if my girls felt this same twinge but watching them through dinner, I figured they were too excited by Sam’s visit to notice.

Sam made garlic bread and a big Caesar salad to go with the spaghetti and the whole thing was delicious, not only because it wasn’t dinner for one or I didn’t have to cook it but because Sam’s spaghetti carbonara could be world famous if the world was lucky enough to get a taste.

I was sipping my wine as the girls were finishing up eating. Both had been talking about their new school, their new friends and Kate, of course, shared a great deal about the fabulous Dane. Therefore they weren’t paying a lot of attention to their food.

I watched as Sam got up and walked to his bag which was on the floor by the couch in the living room. Bending at the waist to paw through it, he came back to the table with something in his hand as Kate popped the last piece of bread in her mouth and Keira finished her last bite of spaghetti.

Sam moved to stand beside Kate, slapped something on table and said, “One for you,” he slapped something else down and went on, “another for you.” He moved around the table as Kate picked the somethings up, inspected them, her eyes got huge and her mouth dropped open. Standing beside Keira, he repeated this process using the same words. “And one for you, another for you.”

“Oh my God,” Kate finally breathed, the cards held close to her face as if she could not believe her eyes and needed close proximity to the wonders she was viewing for them to be real. Her eyes were huge.

Sam came to me, put something by my plate and finished. “And for you.”

I looked down at the gift cards next to my plate as Keira shouted, “Five hundred dollars at Lucky!”

“And two hundred at MAC!” Kate put in on a yell, waving her two cards around.

I looked down at my gift cards. One was for five hundred dollars on a disposable credit card; the other was two hundred dollars at MAC.

In shock, I looked up at Sam but the girls had sprung from their seats and were jumping up and down again with their arms wrapped around him, jostling their uncle as they jumped.

“You gotta earn ‘em, babies,” Sam said, holding them close in his arms and kissing the tops of their heads. I watched him give them a squeeze before he ordered, “Clear the table and do the dishes, yeah?”

Kate didn’t mind chores. The minute she was asked to do something, she did it, didn’t procrastinate, she got it out of the way and moved on. Keira hated them and would procrastinate as long as humanly possible then bitch the entire time she was doing it. But for seven hundred dollar gift cards to her two favorite stores, she’d do the dishes. Hell, who wouldn’t?

Therefore, they both agreed on shouts, “Yeah!”

Then they raced around the table, grabbing plates and Sam grabbed me. He took my arm and lifted me out of my seat, nabbing the bottle of wine from the table as he did. I snagged my glass and Sam’s hand slid down my arm to curl around my fingers. He picked up his glass with practiced ease, carrying it and the bottle as he guided me to the study.