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He had been holding his breath trying not to laugh at me. So much for his charm.
    I spun around on my heel and hightailed it straight back to the others. All the while, Jack was barely keeping up. He was too busy laughing the entire way.
     
    We left the beach late in the afternoon. Clouds had started to drift in and they were giving every indication that we’d have a rolling thunder storm come dinner time. Back at the house, I stuck Jessa straight in the tub to wash away the beach she had brought home with her and then went to explore the kitchen in search of something suitable to prepare for dinner.
    It was right around then that Jack discovered the intercom connecting the apartments.
    “ Helloooo?” I heard him over the static. The unit had come with the house and stemmed from the late seventies. It was fair to say that it was not in ideal working conditions and had developed several kinks over the years. Although, for the most part, we had made them work for us. For instance, one could achieve a shrill shrieking sound by turning on what had once been the AM/FM radio. Now we mostly just used it to scare the shit out of each other in the middle of the night or when we knew the other was still sleeping come noon.
    I walked over and pressed talk. “Yes, Brady?”
    “Oh cool! This thing works.”
    I laughed, knowing he wouldn’t be able to hear me. “Was there anything else?”
    “Yeah. What’s good for dinner?”
    “Check your fridge. May always keeps it stocked with cheese and rotisserie chicken. Should still be good, she was only gone for three days.”
    I waited.
    “Or….I could take you guys out for dinner?”
    “Yeah. Or that.” I listened for the water running from my bathroom. May was already out of the shower. If I tagged her with getting Jessa out of the tub, I could jump in and out and we’d be ready in twenty minutes. “Be down in half an hour.” That way I’d have time to slap some eye shadow on as well.
    As predicted, it was pouring rain when we left, leaving us no choice but to cram into May’s Kia Soul. There was a reason they put hamsters in that stupid commercial. That was about the size you had to be to fit into that thing.
    Anyway, it was Marshall’s car before, but when he found out that May’s Honda Civic had been laid to rest for a permanent nap, he had promptly driven the Kia down here for her. Naturally, she loved it.
    Three days earlier she’d been right there with me coming up with dialogues for the little gerbils during the commercials. Now she just stared daggers at me anytime one aired, silently daring me to defile what Marshall had made sacred.
    Since we had already had our fill of seafood for the day, we headed further inland for some Italian.
    In order to keep Jack’s identity hidden throughout dinner, we each took turns seeing who could come up with the most insane backstory for him. I thought mine was quite creative when I explained to the lady sitting at the table next to us that he was part of a new foster program for prisoners and that we had volunteered to take him in until he was fully able to integrate with normal civilization again. I think I really impressed her. Especially when I showed off my knowledge of prison tats by explaining the hidden meaning in several pieces of Jack’s body art. On an unrelated note, there is a tattoo parlor in Beverly Hills I’m not allowed in. Ever.
    Next up was May, and there was no dry eye in the house when she stood up to make a toast to the brother we had only just met, fifteen years after our father’s passing.
    As the story goes, Brady, the love child, along with his mistress mother had been shipped off to Australia, on a boat no less, where our father had instructed them to wait for him. When he never showed, they had no choice but to assume that he had abandoned them. Then, because life is just so gosh darn mysterious in its ways, we found out about this lost brother when, I, yes, me, not her, even though it was her story,