“What’s wrong?” Landry asks, and I pop up from my bar stool to find her standing in the kitchen doorway in green plaid leggings and a baggy red nightshirt, the same Christmas pajamas she’s worn for the past two years.

“Nothing.”

Fact-Check Rating: Lying through my teeth.

“Want some coffee?” I ask her.

“Yuck, no.” She pads into the kitchen in fuzzy red socks and heads straight for the fridge. “Why are you guys up so early?”

“West Point application. It’s due by midnight.” Penn pulls the iPad close again and wakes up the screen.

“I woke up to pee and realized I haven’t done any Christmas shopping.”

Landry turns away from the open refrigerator, eyes wide. “Me neither!”

“Great. You whip us up some french toast while I take a quick shower, then you and I can go shopping in Daley while Penn finishes part one of his diabolical plan to become an American supersoldier and leave us all behind.”

Penn rolls his eyes at me. Landry grabs a carton of eggs from the fridge and a loaf of bread from the counter.

“You have fifteen minutes to shower,” she says.

“I have to find a real job,” I groan as I set our bags on the coffee table. It took us two hours and the entirety of my savings—except the eleven dollars I now owe my brother for half of Landry’s new cookbook—to get gifts for Mom and Penn. I couldn’t afford anything nice for Jake and Amira, so I got ingredients for another batch of cookies, hoping that my time and the willpower it will take me to resist eating them all myself will qualify as giftworthy. Because I’m now broke.

Of course, no one’s going to hire the #babykiller, and if I’d had a real job before, they probably would have asked me to stop coming in, just like my babysitting clients did when the world decided I was small-town Tennessee’s version of the Antichrist.

“What’d you get me?” Penn emerges from the kitchen with the iPad in one hand and a huge smile on his face.

“Hey!” Landry plants herself in front of our bags so he can’t see them.

“I take it you finished your application?”

“I did.” And while his relief is real and obvious, I can’t help noticing that his smile looks a little forced. Like my mom’s has for the past couple of days.

Finding out your dad might have fathered a baby with one of your classmates can do that to you.

“Let’s have some lunch. Jake’s going to be here in an hour to help us string up Christmas lights.”

“You invited him?”

“More like I begged for an extra set of hands.” Penn’s smile finally reaches his eyes. “But I doubt he’s doing it for me.”