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food.
    I watched as Sam got up and walked to his bag
which was on the floor by the couch in the living room. Bending at
the waist to paw through it, he came back to the table with
something in his hand as Kate popped the last piece of bread in her
mouth and Keira finished her last bite of spaghetti.
    Sam moved to stand beside Kate, slapped
something on table and said, “One for you,” he slapped something
else down and went on, “another for you.” He moved around the table
as Kate picked the somethings up, inspected them, her eyes got huge
and her mouth dropped open. Standing beside Keira, he repeated this
process using the same words. “And one for you, another for
you.”
    “ Oh my God, ” Kate finally breathed, the cards held close to her face
as if she could not believe her eyes and needed close proximity to
the wonders she was viewing for them to be real. Her eyes were
huge.
    Sam came to me, put something by my plate and
finished. “And for you.”
    I looked down at the gift cards next to my
plate as Keira shouted, “Five hundred dollars at Lucky!”
    “And two hundred at MAC!” Kate put in on a
yell, waving her two cards around.
    I looked down at my gift cards. One was for
five hundred dollars on a disposable credit card; the other was two
hundred dollars at MAC.
    In shock, I looked up at Sam but the girls
had sprung from their seats and were jumping up and down again with
their arms wrapped around him, jostling their uncle as they
jumped.
    “You gotta earn ‘em, babies,” Sam said,
holding them close in his arms and kissing the tops of their heads.
I watched him give them a squeeze before he ordered, “Clear the
table and do the dishes, yeah?”
    Kate didn’t mind chores. The minute she
was asked to do something, she did it, didn’t procrastinate, she
got it out of the way and moved on. Keira hated them and would
procrastinate as long as humanly possible then bitch the entire
time she was doing it. But for seven hundred dollar gift cards to
her two favorite stores, she’d do the dishes. Hell, who
wouldn’t?
    Therefore, they both agreed on shouts,
“Yeah!”
    Then they raced around the table, grabbing
plates and Sam grabbed me. He took my arm and lifted me out of my
seat, nabbing the bottle of wine from the table as he did. I
snagged my glass and Sam’s hand slid down my arm to curl around my
fingers. He picked up his glass with practiced ease, carrying it
and the bottle as he guided me to the study.
    I’d put Tim’s old desk in there with our old
computer and the girls sometimes studied in there at their Dad’s
desk. I’d also put the two recliners Tim had in his man cave at
home in there at angles in the corner and that’s where Sam took me.
I curled into a recliner, my feet in the seat, knees to the armrest
and Sam topped up my glass then his own then sat in the other
recliner.
    “Sam, the gift cards –” I began, knowing he
didn’t have that kind of money.
    Sam cut me off, saying, “Dad.”
    I felt my mouth go tight.
    “ Vi, don’t,” Sam warned, “just take it and
use it for somethin’ stupid. You know that’d piss Mom off
most.”
    It certainly would. Mom hated anything
frivolous, most especially frivolous spending, and trendy clothes
and makeup, for that matter.
    “She know Dad gave you the money to buy those
cards?” I asked.
    “She will when she balances the
checkbook.”
    “Dad’ll catch it.”
    “Dad doesn’t care.”
    I looked Sam in the eye. “And I don’t care
either. Too little, too late.”
    “Vi –”
    I shook my head. “Too little, too late,
Sam.”
    I looked toward the kitchen watching the
girls tidying up, their thick, healthy, long, dark hair gleaming
under the overhead kitchen lights; their flawless, youthful skin
glowing; their thin, coltish but blooming teenage girl bodies
moving with unconscious grace. I took in my girls as they moved
around, girls who had very little to do with their grandparents
after my parents disowned me when I got pregnant