“That was nice of you.” I stare hard at her. She’s not a normal college kid. She’s much older inside. “Do you do that a lot?”
She shrugs. “I used to do it all the time, but I don’t get to do it as much now that I don’t live here full time.”
“How’s college?” I ask her.
“It’s good. Fun and work combined. I have an apartment off campus that I share with a friend, so that part is nice.”
“Let me guess,” I say teasingly. “You want to be a teacher.” I wait to hear her response.
“Oh, God, no,” she says with a laugh. “You couldn’t pay me enough.”
Seeing as how I’ve been paying her to take care of my kids for the past week, that confuses me. “But you’re so good at it.”
She shakes her head. “Just because I’m good at it doesn’t mean I want to do it full time. I love coming home and playing with the kids, doing crafts and stuff, but I also like leaving them when my time is up.”
“Huh,” I say as I scratch my head. “Color me surprised. With all the kids in your house, I figured you got stuck babysitting every time you come home.”
“No.” She scratches her knee. “Jake and Mom are pretty good about taking care of their own kids.”
“That’s not what I meant,” I rush to say, but she holds up a hand to stop me.
“I know what you meant.” She laughs. “Mom has always been pretty good about not making me a de facto parent.”
“Most older kids with younger siblings get stuck babysitting a lot.”
“Mom and Jake were determined that their huge family wouldn’t change my life, I guess.” She shrugs again. “You’d have to ask them what their reasons are for it, but they’ve always insisted that I be a big sister and not a mom figure.”
There’s one thing that has confused me, ever since I met her. “Alex and Trixie have the same dad as you, right?”
“Yes.”
“And Hank has a different dad.”
“Right, but they haven’t decided how to tell him about all that yet. His dad wasn’t a great guy. He stalked my mom and he died because of it, so there’s that.”
I’d heard about all that. “Trixie and Alex both call Jake Dad, but you don’t. Why is that?”
“Oh,” she says as she scratches her arm. “I was sixteen when Mom and Jake got married, so it just didn’t feel right. Trixie and Alex were younger. They don’t have as many memories of our real dad as I do. They remember him, but it’s not as deep.”
“But you remember him well?” I ask. I tread lightly, because I’ve been really thinking about this topic and I want her opinion as a child who lost a parent.
She smiles. “I remember everything. Every Christmas. Every birthday. Every ball game. Every time he came back from deployment. Every chocolate chip pancake. Every everything.”
“That’s good.” Emotion clogs my throat and I swallow it back.
“Oh,” she says softly. “You’re worried they won’t remember you.”
I try to joke about it, but it’s been eating at me like a sore that won’t heal. “It’s been on my mind.”
“Well, as a kid who lost a parent, I can assure you that they will never ever forget you. You will be with them in everything they do, even when they don’t realize it.” She lays her hand on my arm, and she looks so much like Katie that it’s startling. The baby walks up and hands her a flower. “Thank you,” she says brightly. “Can you get me another?” He walks away to go pick another flower. She turns back to face me and rests her hand on my arm again, like she
wants all my attention. “Do you worry that they’ll forget their mother?”
“Never.” Mainly because I can keep her alive for them through my own recollections. But when I’m gone…
“They won’t forget you either. My mom doesn’t think I know about them, but my dad left a series of letters before he died. Apparently, he’d seen some men killed in action the night before, so he wanted to communicate. There’s one for the day each of us gets married. I saw them in my mom’s treasure box.”
I smile at the thought. “Did you read yours?”