The Week the Kids Got the Big Bedroom

She asked if the kids could stay with us while she was gone. Of course they could.

Where else would they go? Their father had not called them since Thanksgiving. I said yes before she finished asking.

She left on a Saturday morning in Kim’s minivan with a new swimsuit still on the hanger and a bag of snacks for the drive.

Galveston is about thirteen hours from our place, straight down through Kansas City and Oklahoma and Dallas.

Avery stood on the porch in her socks and waved until the minivan turned onto the blacktop.

Lane had already gone back inside to watch cartoons. Travis had been in the barn since five with a heifer that was having trouble, and he came up to the house just after they had gone.

Monday morning was the post from the ship, the one Avery read over my shoulder. Tuesday morning was the second one, a picture of a pink drink with an umbrella in it on a table by a pool.

Avery did not say anything about that one at all, which was worse.

Then, on Tuesday night, Lane could not sleep. It was close to ten when I heard him on the stairs, and I found him sitting on the bottom step in his pajama pants with his blanket around him like a cape.

“Avery kicks the bunk,” he said. “Every time she rolls over, the whole thing shakes, and I can’t fall asleep.”

I took him to the kitchen for a glass of milk, and he sat on the counter while I warmed it, the way Travis used to let him do.

He drank half of it, and then he set the cup down and looked at me with those serious brown eyes he gets from his grandpa.

“Aunt Callie,” he said, “how come Mom’s room is the biggest when there’s two of us and only one of her?”

I did not have an answer for him that was not mean, so I did not give one.

I told him that was a good question for his mom, and I carried him back up the stairs and tucked him into the bottom bunk.

On my way back past the big front bedroom, I stopped. The door was open a crack.

Her bed was made, with the decorative pillows on it, and the two tall windows let in enough of the yard light to see the whole empty room.

I stood there longer than I should have. Then I went downstairs and got into bed next to Travis, who was not asleep either, and I told him what Lane had said, word for word.

Travis was quiet for a long time. He is like his dad that way. Ron can go a whole morning in the tractor without saying ten words, and then say one thing that settles the whole matter.

“I’m not going to put her out,” he said at last. “Not my sister. Not with two kids. Not in January. And I’m not calling anybody, and I’m not taking her to court over a handshake. You know that, right?”

“I know that,” I said. I did know it. You do not evict your husband’s sister and her two kids in a Missouri January over rent, and Travis was never going to call the law on his own sister. Nobody I would want to be married to would.