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the stairs.
    “Do you see what I have to put up with?”
    “I’ll talk to him.”
    “Talk to him! That’s all you ever do is talk to him! Why don’t you punish him? Put him in his room, take away his allowance, ground him!”
    “I’ll talk to him,” she repeated.
    “I don’t even tell you most of the things he does. When you get home tonight I’m going to tell you everything he did wrong today.”
    “You’ll have to wait till tomorrow. I won’t be home until you’re in bed. Erin will be taking care of you two.”
    “Erin! Two nights of Erin in a row isn’t fair,” I cried. “Besides, when you come home so late I forget half of the things I want to talk to you about.”
    “Maybe you should write them down.”
    “Like in a letter?” I asked in disbelief.
    “Yes, exactly, like a letter!” she exclaimed.
    Great, I have a father who bounces around from place to place and the only contact I have with him is the emails he writes, but those don’t even come so regularly because there’s not always internet connections where he ends up. Now I have a mother, who lives in the same house as me, who thinks I should write her letters.
    “Why do we have to have Erin? Why can’t I take care of us?” I asked.
    “You’re too young.”
    “But I’m not too young to take care of us all day long,” I protested.
    “We’ve been over this, Sarah. It’s different during the day, but not late at night.”
    “Late? How late? You don’t usually even work on Friday nights.”
    “It isn’t work,” she said meekly as she put in a pair of earrings. “It’s a date.”
    “A date!”
    “Yes, a date.”
    “Is it with that Peter guy again?” I asked.
    “No. Somebody new.”
    “‘Who is he?”
    “His name is Robert.”
    “Where did you meet him?”
    “At work. He’s a lawyer,” she answered.
    “I haven’t heard you mention him before.”
    “He just started. I better get going,” she said as she moved by me and out of the bathroom. I trailed behind her, along the hall and down the stairs.
    “Isn’t it unusual for a firm as small as yours to hire another lawyer so soon after you became a partner?” I asked.
    “He’s more like a … junior lawyer. He just graduated,”she said as she pushed into the kitchen.
    “Junior lawyer! How old is he?” I asked.
    “Sarah, how should I know how old he is?”
    “You must have some idea,” I stated. “About how old is he?”
    “I don’t know, twenty-seven or twenty-eight, I’d imagine,” she said. She looked tremendously embarrassed.
    “Twenty-seven or twenty-eight! If he’s twenty-seven then he’s exactly half way between my age and yours,” I stated.
    “Sarah, age isn’t important. Everybody says I look a lot younger than forty-one.”
    She grabbed her purse and started for the door.
    “Aren’t you going to have breakfast?”
    “I don’t have time, Sarah.”
    “But breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” I said.
    “Maybe I’ll have a bigger lunch to make up for it.” She gave me a hug. “Look after your brother and I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
    She picked up her purse, grabbed her briefcase and was out the door before I could say another word. Maybe I should start writing that letter. I heard the engine start and went to the window to watch her drive out of sight.
    As she disappeared out of view in one direction, Nick entered the kitchen from the other. He opened acupboard door and pulled out a monster jar of peanut butter.
    “Are we going over to see Mr. McCurdy before or after lunch?” he asked.
    “I didn’t think we were going to go at all today. Shouldn’t we wait a few days so we don’t appear too eager?”
    “But we are eager. I don’t want all that good lying I did with Mom to go to waste. Besides, if we don’t go soon we might not get to go at all.”
    “Why not?”
    “Mom may hear something about Mr. McCurdy when she’s shopping or from one of the other neighbours and then she won’t let us go.”
    “I