Maybe it had all been an elaborate dream.
“No rest for the wicked.” Mug in hand, Carmen swept toward the stairs. “C’mon, kid. If we’re late they’ll never let us forget it.”
Kenna registered what day it was, along with the absence of the smell of meat roasting in the oven.
“Late for what?” she managed, getting to her feet.
“The soup kitchen. It’s tradition. Our mom always used to say, ‘How can we eat Thanksgiving dinner while Eugene’s going hungry?’ When we were little—”
“Don’t tell that story, Caramello.” Dayton’s objection echoed from upstairs.
Caramello. Carmina. Carmen.
Everyone in the house had a different name for her.
She lowered her voice and went on with it despite her brother’s protest. “When we were little, 6 or 7, we stayed with our aunt while our parents volunteered at the soup kitchen. We were helping set the table and Dayton starts shaking his head and goes, ‘I wish mom and dad could eat with us. Eugene should learn to cook for himself.’”
Kenna stifled a laugh and suddenly it was easy to picture him as a kid. Young, uninhibited.
Shirtless and unamused, Dayton looked down upon them from the second-floor landing. “I hope you’ve already showered. I’m not sparing you an ounce of hot water after your deliberate betrayal.”
* * *
They saw Eddy and Gwen for 10 seconds when they arrived at St. Mary’s, long enough for them to greet each other before heading off to their separate stations. Gwen snagged Carmen against her will as an extra set of hands in the church’s kitchen. Kenna and Dayton were assigned to the small group of people serving food.
A most foul delight spread through her chest as he helped her out of her coat. His own sister had given her a warning of which she was already well aware.
Yet despite every piece of evidence and testimony that advised against it, Kenna loved him. Even if she never told him.
What good would come of such a revelation?
Yes, he claimed to mirror those feelings but she suspected she was nothing more to him than an entertaining pitstop on his twisted map of lovers that was destined to stretch far beyond their involvement.
She zoned out on a pair of volunteers who were unfolding disposable tablecloths and draping them over the tables, wholly transfixed on the billowing sheets of PVC. Something slapped in her hands and the trance was broken. Her pulse banged around her body like a pinball at full speed as she and Dayton slipped on the suggested but not required plastic gloves.
“So, is this part of the reason you don’t like coming home?” she asked.
“No. I don’t mind this.” His neck tensed, cords popping against that rigid column. “The lack of medical discourse bothers me. I have doctors for parents and they’d sooner broach the subject of religious and civil unrest in the Middle East than dare to discuss our work.”
“That must be hard for you.”
It was the same detached, clinical dialogue she’d heard Dayton use ad nauseam with his patients. It worked just as well here. She lacked a better response.
He shrugged.
“They think psychiatrists have a God complex, that people should go to church instead of my office. They’re my parents. I should see them more often, but it’s hard to get past their dismissal of the very thing I went through 12 years of schooling and residency for. The thing that I’m proud to do.”
Tentatively, Kenna reached out and touched his wrist. “I value the work you do. It’s tremendously important. I’m sorry your parents don’t see that.”
His smile was weak but present.
Her ringtone sounded among the pile of coats and bags in the corner. She’d forgotten to put it on silent. She reflexively pressed ignore as the screen proclaimedHome.
“Your family?” he surmised.
If Dayton wanted her to be his forever—as much as she was disinclined to believe those words—she supposed it was best for him to get acquainted with the ugliness of the life she’d left behind. “I gave up trying to talk to them a while ago.”
“None of them? Not even your sisters?”