Lousiana Hotshot

forward and took her hand, his shaved head shining. “Well, you have.”
    “And there’s a lot more to come.”
    They turned away from each other and toward Talba, as brides and grooms do when the ceremony is over. They were grinning like hyenas. “Congratulations,” she said. “This is a little bemusing.”
    Michelle frowned. “How’s that?”
    “I just wondered when you were planning to tell us. When the kid goes to first grade?” She sounded so petty she hated herself, but she spoke on her mother’s account.
    They weren’t even slightly daunted. “Matter of fact,” Michelle said, “we called Miz Clara tonight, but there was no answer. We wanted to have you all over this weekend.”
    Corey said, “Don’t tell her till we do, okay?”
    “Of course not.”
    Michelle said, “Well, why don’t we all sit down?”
    “Actually, if you don’t mind… ”
    “Oh, you need to see Corey alone? Sure. I’m dead tired anyhow.” Michelle was so damned cooperative, even
that
was irritating. Talba never had liked her, and she didn’t want to start now.
    She didn’t like her because Michelle was so patently a trophy— the perfect figure, the show-stopping face, the near-white skin (this part embarrassed Talba); most of all, the fact that Michelle didn’t work, did nothing all day but arrange flowers, it seemed to Talba. And now this Stepford-wife routine.
    She’d have liked for Corey to marry someone with a little more edge, some bite, maybe. A brain or two. Someone more like the women in her own family. And now there was going to be a mini-Michelle. She wasn’t exactly jumping up and down.
    Talba said no, thanks, she didn’t need anything, and when Michelle was out of earshot, Corey said, “You been drinking?”
    “Wine with dinner. Why?”
    “You smell like you bathed in it.”
    He was making her mad. It was obvious this whole damn thing was a mistake. Here she was in her brother’s “great room” with its cathedral ceilings and its sleek Italian furniture, and that alone made her uncomfortable. Then he had to come at her like that. She stood up. “Maybe I better just go.”
    The dog wagged its tail, as if
it
liked her, anyhow.
    Corey looked at her a different way, a gentler way, like he was beginning to see her distress. He said, “What’s wrong, little bird?” and that did her in.
    She sat back down as if struck. “You did call me that.”
    “Well, yeah. I did. That supposed to mean something?”
    “I don’t mean now. You did when we were kids, didn’t you?”
    He looked a little hurt. “You don’t remember?”
    “I just did. You dressed up like Big Bird, didn’t you?”
    “Best performance of my life. You mean you don’t treasure it every day of your life?”
    She laughed, suddenly delighted with him, seeing a side of him she’d almost forgotten about. Maybe the baby had softened him up. “I remembered today.”
    “And you just had to come over and shout a belated ‘bravo.’ Well, now, I appreciate that.”
    “Corey, something strange is happening to me. I think I’ve forgotten a lot of stuff.”
    “What’s strange about that? You’re getting old is all. We’re all losing brain cells.”
    It wasn’t like him to kid around like that and yet… it used to be. He really was more like his old self than he’d been in years.
    “Listen, I want to know something. Do you remember…” She stopped, unable to get the word out.
    “Do I remember what?”
    “Our father.” It came out in a dull monotone, barely audible.
    He sank back on the white leather. “Woo. What are you thinking about? Why would you bring up something like that?”
    Suddenly she was angry. “Corey, you should hear yourself. Since when is a person’s father ‘something like that?’ Since you’re about to be a father yourself seems like you’d have a little more understanding.”
    His forehead was rumpled up like a bed. “I hear you.” He seemed to be trying to stave something off, keep it out of his own mind. “I shouldn’t have said it that way. But I can remember things you can’t… and you should count your blessings.”
    “But, Corey, I want to
know” Whiny,
she thought.
Ever the whiny little sister.
    “You were two when he left. For practical purposes, he wasn’t your father at all. You’ve got no reason to do this.”
    “He did something really bad, didn’t he?”
    Her brother stretched, putting his feet on a glass coffee table. He looked exhausted. “I don’t know. I don’t