All I Never Wanted (Excerpt)

Chapter Five

"Your face is looking better," Maggie said as I clocked in Monday afternoon. She was sitting in her office chair, working at an old box computer. A dot matrix printer rested on the bookshelf behind her, and I'm pretty sure there was an adding machine under all of the papers strewn across her desk—the office frozen to 1995.

I thanked her and went to work unloading boxes and stocking shelves. An hour later, she paged me to the front. Another lane needed opening.

I hated working the cash register.

A "rush" at Knoell's was more than twenty customers in the store at once, and an afternoon rush consisted mostly of moms and their luxury SUVs—cars so oversized they barely fit in the parking spaces. They'd already picked the kids up from soccer/piano/karate, or were heading that way.

Sometimes we would get a real rush, like a run on bread and milk just before a storm. Maggie always joked that she should cut the local weathermen a check every time they said "winter weather." Because God forbid you don't have a glass of milk to go with your flurries. When things seemed darker than usual this winter, she would ask if I wanted to call up TS & C, our local communications company, and report a potential blizzard. She always laughed when she said it, but sometimes I got the feeling part of her was serious.

I cut through the baby supply aisle—wipes and diapers and plastic containers full of pureed greens—and opened register three. I'd discovered a groove—greeting customers, asking if they'd found everything okay, scanning, bagging, and returning receipts and coupons before wishing them a good day—when a familiar voice squeaked my name.

"What a surprise to see you here!"

I loaded the last of the reusable bags into a woman's cart before turning toward my next customer.

"Hi, Mrs. Abbott."

"How are your parents?" she asked, removing stalks of celery and bundles of carrots from her cart and onto the conveyor belt—all the makings of a party-appropriate veggie tray. How many times had I seen my mom hand Broderick the same shopping list? "I missed your mother at the literacy luncheon."

"They're good. Mom has been busy with the McMillan House renovation," I replied, tossing in the name of my mother's firm's latest project—the last one I could remember, anyway. "How's Caitlin?"

I didn't really give a shit, but I'd rather talk about anything other than my family situation. Anything to keep the conversation away from me and my brother.

I don't think they made Mentos strong enough to break the "keeping up appearances" habit.

"She's doing very well," Mrs. Abbott said as I rang up her vegetables. "She's working on her freshman year at Northwestern State. You know she took a gap semester. Spent some time in Europe. Now she's considering law school, so we're just beginning to look at our options."

We. Our.

The words so second nature by now Mrs. Abbott probably didn't even realize she talked about her daughter's life like it was her own. A team effort. We're looking. Our options. Because attending law school wasn't just Caitlin's decision. Just like attending NSU (on academic honors scholarship). Just like the course load she took at McGowan to get that scholarship—that wasn't her decision. Neither was the soccer team. Or the debate club. Or the volunteer work.

There was a plan in place.

Always.

Life carefully scripted. Parents writing all the rules, then footnoting those rules with presumptions. Raising guidelines to the power of expectations.