Page 25 of Sing For Me

My eyes catch on the canvas print behind her desk—my parents on their wedding day, both their arms around a ten-year-old Wyatt, my mother’s belly huge under her gauzy white dress. I had been born less than a month later.

She turns to see what’s caught my attention, a soft smile tilting her mouth as she joins me in gazing at the picture. “Sometimes that feels like yesterday,” she murmurs. “And then I look at you and can’t believe how big you are.”

“I think Silas has grown a whole inch since summer,” I say. “He’ll be as tall as me soon.”

She grins wickedly. “Don’t tell your father that. He desperately wants to be taller than at least one of his boys. He’s in total denial, of course.”

I chuckle. My dad is the shortest of his brothers and sensitive about it. Wyatt and I both take great pleasure in the several inches we have over him.

My mom sits on the pristine eggshell blue armchair in the corner. I used to kneel in front of that chair when I was little, rubbing my cheek against the soft velvet fabric while I played with my trucks. I take a seat across from her on the cream sofa.

“I’m so glad you came by the house. How have you been?”

I stretch my legs out in front of me, running my hands over my face, my beard scratchy. I could use a trim.

“Shop is busy,” I say. “Not that I’m complaining.”

“You work too hard,” she says, and I roll my eyes.

“You’re one to talk.” She gives me a rueful smile and doesn’t argue. My mother runs the family’s charitable foundation, manages her kids’ hectic schedule, and keeps my dad in line. She’s pretty amazing.

“Speaking of.” She stands and retrieves something from her desk. “I was going to bring this over later in the week if I didn’t see you first.”

I frown at the thick creamy envelope she hands me. “What’s this?”

My mother crosses her arms, giving me the no-nonsense face I saw so many times when getting into trouble as a kid. “Don’t tell me you forgot about the gala, Will. It’s the most important fundraiser of the year.”

Shit. Ihadforgotten. “Mom—”

“Don’t even try it.” She pierces me with a knowing glare. “Youwillbe there. This is not a discussion.”

I try not to sigh. I know there’s no getting out of this. The Sunshine Foundation gala occurs every year, my mother throwing herself into the planning for weeks on end. The night with the family brings in nearly twenty percent of the foundation’s yearly operating budget. If I even tried to skip it, my uncles would probably show up at my door and forcibly drag me there.

“When is this?”

She narrows her eyes. “A week from Saturday. I’ll arrange to have your tux delivered.” Her expression challenges me to argue.

“Yes, mother,” I intone, and she laughs, the tension falling from her face.

“Good boy.” Her phone dings and she glances at the screen, a soft smile lighting up her expression. She only wears that smile for one person.

“What does Dad have to say?”

She looks up from the phone. “He wants to know what to bring home for dinner.” She waggles her eyebrows at me. “I’m in a greasy Chinese food kind of mood. What do you say?”

My instinct is to beg off. Come up with an excuse to leave before my dad gets back. As if she can sense what I’m thinking, my mother frowns at me.

“He misses you, Will.”

I roll my eyes. “I saw him a few weeks ago.”

“Three weeks,” she says, her voice sharp. “Believe me, he keeps track.”

I feel a sharp stab of guilt. I don’t want to hurt my father. I don’t want there to be a distance between us. It’s just hard, sometimes. For me to be around him and my uncles, when so much of their lives revolve around the very thing I do my best to avoid.

And harder still to make myself forget the role the four of them played in what happened to Skye.

“Stay and have dinner,” my mother urges, leaning over so her soft hand can run over the back of my suddenly tense shoulders.

“Will you kick out the hordes of excess children currently in our kitchen?”

She laughs, squeezing my shoulder. “I think that can be arranged. This will be an exclusive Warners only dinner.”

I manage a grin. The cousins sometimes refer to each other that way, using our mother’s maiden names to differentiate between so many Ransome branches. “You guys really should have hyphenated our names,” I tell her. “Would have made things a lot simpler.”

My mom rolls her eyes as she types out a response to my dad. “Oh, yeah. Your uncles would have been totally mature and not at all obnoxious about that.”

“You say my uncles as ifDadwouldn’t have been the most obnoxious of all.”

She finishes her text and slips the phone into her back pocket before reaching for my hand. “Come on. Let’s go send some superfluous children packing so we can eat.”