My Three Cousins

Chapter Three

After that I lay in my bed more worried than ever waiting for morning.  Although, our conversation hadn't confirmed anything more than what I saw at the lake, the fact that she had sought out a conversation at all made me uneasy.  I wished once again that my mom hadn't brought us here.  I thought back to right after Aunt Maggie died, to the horrible part of me that felt a little joy at never coming back to see my cousins again.

The next morning, I heard everyone moving around the house before I got up.  Mom seemed to be hellbent on cleaning because my nose burned with the smell of Clorox and Fabuloso.  I paused, not wanting to be recruited into the cleaning, but eventually my hunger forced me downstairs.  As soon as mom saw me, she threw a pair of yellow rubber gloves my way.  "What about breakfast?" I asked with a whine, already putting the gloves on.

"You sleep past noon you miss breakfast," she said pointing me toward a pile of dishes in the sink.

"Apparently lunch was at eleven, so we missed that too," Fitz called from the other room sounding as disgruntled as I felt.

I rolled my eyes, already pulling the gloves onto my hands.  "This is child labor, Mom." 

"It's allowed when you're my child," she said kissing my head, "I'll dry."

I felt pretty good about the peace offering so I picked up a dish and began washing.  "So where are the girls?" I tried to make the question seemed casual instead of concerned.

"I sent them out," she said, "they have friends to see.  They've been keeping this place clean and paying the bills and taking care of everything for months.  We're here to give them a break."

"Makes sense," I was trying to walk the line between too excited and too resentful so that she would keep sending my cousins away, at least until I knew how to make sense of what happened at the lake.

I had clearly leaned a bit too far toward excited because she looked at me questioningly.  "Anyway," I interrupted her train of thought, "what did the doctor say about Vivian?"

Mom let out a sigh before answering, "the doctor said she was fine, like she didn't even fall in.  Luckily the girls were there."

"And me!" I said offended even though I knew I really hadn't done much to help.

"I'm sure you were a big help too," she laughed a little at the idea.

"I told you we got to her fast," I emphasized the "we" to remind her of my part in the whole thing.

"Did you?" She asked, "I believe you, but how close were you to her, really?"  Despite her words, the way her eyes darted back and forth between me and the dishes as she spoke told me she was skeptical at best.

I mentally cursed Fitz for his disloyalty.  "Yes mother," I said defensively, "I told you already we were right there!"

"Ok, Addison," she said back, matching my aggression in a way that lived somewhere between serious and playful, "I just wanted to check that nothing weird happened."

I had to stop from either gasping or dropping the soapy dish in my hand.  I paused before asking, "Weird? Like what?"

I saw a look flash across her face before she playfully swatted me with the dish towel in her hands, "I don't know you tell me.  I know you haven't always been the nicest to Vivian."

"You think I pushed her in the lake?" I asked dropping the dish on purpose this time.  I wanted to keep my voice calm, but I could feel the outrage creeping in, and I knew I was getting louder. "Never mind that I was the one who brought her up here to you, but of course you think it was Joan, Ruth, and Helen who swooped in and rescued poor Vivian after her big mean half-sister attacked her and tried to drown her!"  

"Calm down, Addison," Mom's eyes hardened and her tone became sharp.  She had switched from playful to angry but so had I.

"No, clean the rest of the house yourself.  I'm not staying here to be a witness while you build a case for attempted murder against me."

With that I stormed out and I heard Fitz behind me, "Totally uncool," he yelled at mom but we both knew he wasn't really angry, "I'm with Addy."  Then his shuffling footsteps were behind me trying to catch up.

"Got your back," he said laughing but I wasn't in the mood to laugh along with him.

"You just wanted to get mad at mom and stop cleaning," I snapped at him.

"That's the attitude that makes people think you tried to kill our half-sister," he laughed again, not caring how I felt about the situation.

I tried to think of something smart ass to say back to him, but my anger was gone, and I was kind of glad to have a brother who would always storm out of the house with me even if he wasn't really mad.  As we walked farther away from the house, I was replaying my conversation with mom in my head, working myself back up to anger when I remembered that he ratted me out. "Did you tell mom I wasn't by Vivian when she fell in the water?"

"Yeah, and I told her that you punched out that Savanah girl in elementary school and smoked a cigarette in the seventh grade," he said sarcastically.

I couldn't tell if it was, "I would never tell mom" sarcasm or it was, "I told, and this was the easiest way to avoid directly lying to you" sarcasm but I decided to drop it.  "You know when Mom said she thought maybe something weird had happened down by the lake I thought for a minute she might mean the girls, like she had felt they were weird, too.  Of course, she just meant me."

"If mom knew they were creepy she would never have brought us back here and put her little Vivian in harm's way."  Fitz said.  He tried to say the words casually as if Mom only caring about Vivian was a joke, but I could hear the hurt hiding behind his voice. 

"How do we find out what happened?" I asked.

"With our cousins?  I don't care what happened, my plan is just to stay away from them and let you shove your head up their asses as usual."

With that I knew he was back into annoying little brother mode and any closeness between us was gone, so I let the topic drop, realizing anything I found out would have to be found out alone.