Despite the Pain

Chapter 32

Albion

"Albion, wake up," Dad's voice dragged me out of sleep.

It was Sunday morning and I still hadn't quite recovered from the dance Friday, let alone working most of the day in the bakery on Saturday. I groaned, sitting up and rubbing my hands over my face. "I could use your help downstairs with the cleaning. Ryan took off, and I'd like to get it done before everyone gets here."

I murmured and nodded, his statement not quite registering until he'd already started down the hall. Everyone. Sunday. Adam, Susan, and Mason were coming to dinner, and Dad had invited Mrs. Reynolds, Dawn, and Helena as well. I swore quietly and looked over at the clock.

The morning was already nearly over. As I eased out of bed I remembered another piece of the plans for the day. Dawn would be over early to help get the cleaning done, and that meant more time with her. That made getting out of bed a little more worthwhile. After taking a few minutes to get dressed, feed Buddy, and choke back my fistful of morning medications, I went downstairs.

I paused at the bottom of the stairs, watching Dad rake the soot out of the big oven and into the trash barrel leaning against the mouth. He swept a pile of it too far to one side, missing the barrel completely and sending a black puff to the floor and down the front of his pants. A memory started to come back to me as he muttered and swore under his breath, dusting himself off before crouching to clean the floor.

Ryan and I had been doing the same job a few years before. It was just after Adam had moved out and we still weren't quite used to dealing with cleaning the kitchen without him, our pace wasn't as fast as Mom would have liked, and we rushed parts of it in favor of just getting the job done before running off to do better things on the one day a week we ever really got a break from the work.

Ryan had turned cleaning the ovens into a competition to see who could leave the darkest streaks of soot on the other without getting caught or spilling any on the floor and creating more work for ourselves, and I was losing.

I swore at him, the word still new and big and tough, and wiped a greasy black streak down the front of his shirt. It was his laughter that got Mom's attention. She stormed in from the storefront, knees and elbows dirty and wet from scrubbing the floor, demanding to know what the hell we were doing. Why we weren't finished. Why we were so damn dirty.

It was the streak on Ryan's shirt and my criminally sooty hand that tipped her over the edge. I couldn't remember what she said. A blur of 'useless' and 'stupid' and 'don't you know how hard it is to get your fucking clothes clean as it is' as she stomped across the kitchen toward us raising her hand.

I closed my eyes and shrank back against the ovens, but the blow didn't come down on me. Ryan took that hit, standing in front of me and staring her down, just recently having finally outgrown her. He didn't even wince, and I remember how much that scared me. The silence after the hard smack of the back of her hand against his face. And as soon as she left the first thing he did was ask if I was okay, his lips and teeth still red with blood.

"Al?" Dad's hands were on my shoulders, his face a few inches from mine, and I couldn't remember how he got there. I pressed my eyes closed, fighting back a wave of nausea and the threat of an oncoming headache. "Albion, are you okay?"

"Y-yeah," I said, forcing myself to open my eyes and focus on him. It took a concentrated effort to stop seeing two of him. "I'm f-fine."

"You sure?" he pushed my hair off my forehead, frowning as he pressed the back of his knuckles to my skin. "You had a seizure."

"I'm fine," I snapped, pushing his hand away. How did he know what had happened? I'd just gotten caught up in bad memory. I was tired. That was all.