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sure.”
    â€œNot my scene, Jelly Bean. Plus me sharing a hotel room with you and your mom and Kya.” He shuddered. “Too much estrogen.”
    His battle with the video game went on until Mom’s voice interrupted. She walked down the stairs toward the living room and burst into a spontaneous song. Loudly. She walked to James and me, incorporating us into her song. “Stop playing games and come eat,” she sang, and stepped over top of us, singing on about monkey pancakes.
    Neither one of us even flinched. She’d been abusing hits from the radio, making up her own words, and singing at the top of her lungs for as long as I could remember. I don’t know how many verses I’d listened to about the horrors of menopause or about starting a paintball business in your retirement years. Mom turned everything into a wacky song.
    She wore her favorite new T-shirt. Black with tiny white writing. Sarcasm is a service I offer for free. She’d ordered it for herself from eBay. No wonder I’d craved affection as a kid. I turned the game off. James and I stood and followed Mom to the kitchen.
    At the stove, Dad wore his Saturday morning apron with a picture of a woman’s body in a bikini. Indie stood at the table, placing down a plate piled high with bacon. In a glass jar in the middle of the table, an arrangement of lavender celebrated our cheery ritual.
    Mom slid up beside Dad and patted him on the rear. He wiggled his butt at her and she moved to the cupboard to get coffee cups. We all put aside any differences on Saturday mornings. It was family time and we all got along, whether we wanted to or not. “Coffee? Indie? James?” She didn’t ask me since she knew I couldn’t stand the taste. I went to the fridge to pull out orange juice and then grabbed some glasses and set them down on the table that Indie had already set. Saturday was man-day in the kitchen.
    â€œNot a lot of kids showed up for the new paintball league,” Dad said to all of us from the griddle, where he was pouring batter into his coveted monkey-pancake pan. Around the pancakes, he was scrambling up a huge pile of eggs. Indie scooted past me to grab toast that popped up from the toaster and spread butter across the top.
    â€œI’m sure there’re more pseudo-criminals needing to rehearse for future years of delinquency.” James slid into a chair at the kitchen table. “No offense, Mr. Black.”
    â€œOh my God, James. Could you be any funnier?” I bumped my elbow into his arm as I sat down in the chair beside him. “Oh. Yes. You could.”
    Dad chuckled. “What would we do without James’s healthy doses of cynicism?”
    â€œWhat can I say? My blood type is B negative.”
    Dad smiled at James and flipped over a monkey pancake. “So your dad is gone for a few more weeks?” he asked.
    James nodded. “Yeah. Maybe longer. He wasn’t sure last time we Skyped.”
    â€œAnd how’s your mom? We need to get her over here for dinner soon.” Dad scooped up a pile of eggs on his spatula, walked to James’s plate, and plopped them down.
    â€œShe’s not very mobile this week. But she’s doing okay.” He glanced at my mom. “Mrs. B keeps us well fed,” James said. “I keep telling her to stop sending so many lasagnas and casseroles but they keep coming. I’m pretty sure my mom wants to make out with your entire family.”
    â€œSign me up,” Dad said. He scooped a pile of eggs on my plate and winked at me.
    Mom threw a towel at him and they laughed.
    I smiled. James’s mom’s condition sometimes left her tired and unable to do much on the physical side of things, so when his dad was away on duty, which was about half the year, the bulk of the household duties were left to James. He’d learned to cook pretty young and had always had a lot of extra chores. A nurse came in to look after his