We chewed in silence as the sugar rush kicked in. A Boston cream pie is basically a yellow cake with custard globbed between the layers and chocolate frosting on top. It’s really a cake, but everybody pretends it’s okay to call it a pie. The old Parker House Hotel in Boston claims to have created it back in the day. I’m not sure I buy that either, since one would think that a professional chef would have had the good sense to call a cake a cake. As a preschool teacher, these are the things that drive you crazy. I mean, if the adults don’t use the correct words, how can we expect the kids to learn them?

“Okay, big bro,” Carol said. “Time’s up. Out with it.”

Johnny shrugged. “She boogied. The old lady boogied.”

“Could it possibly be because you called her an old lady?” I said.

“I, for one,” Carol said, “am finding all this hippie talk confusing. Do you mean Kim went out dancing, or she took off?”

I heard a funny sound, and when I followed it to my brother, he was crying.

In our family, you didn’t hug someone who was crying, especially if it was your brother. You gave him his space.

I reached out one hand and laid it carefully on Johnny’s forearm.

He looked at me through tear-filled eyes.

“Okay if I crash for a while?” he said.

“Of course,” I said. “Just to clarify, you mean stay here, right?”

Chapter Nine

“What was I supposed to say?” I said to John.

Carol and I had settled Johnny into the space my father had just vacated, the bedroom that had been my parents’ room. John and I were alone in my childhood bedroom again. We could still hear people clomping around downstairs.

“My dad left his old bed behind,” I added. “So it’s not like it’s that big a deal.”

John and I were sitting side-by-side on the edge of the king-size bed we’d bought to replace the twin beds my sister Christine and I had slept on while we were growing up. The new bed took up most of the space in the room. Because nothing else would fit, we each had a pile of books on our side to serve as temporary bedside tables.

Maybe I could start a home improvement blog and write a post about bedside table alternatives for tight spaces. Except then I’d have to come up with another idea so I could write a second post, and I couldn’t really think of one. Come to think of it, using the books for bedside tables had been John’s idea. Scratch that blog.

We heard a rousing cheer from my father’s new digs.

“Sounds like we’re missing the first toast in the new man cave,” I said.