Chapter Three
A door opened somewhere overhead and quick little pixie footsteps hopped down the stairs. The young man on the couch turned swiftly, glancing back as his younger sister appeared on the staircase across the hallway from the television room.
“Hey, Ricky, it’s your girlfriend!” Debbie teased their little brother.
Ricky surely would have turned red in life, from embarrassment or anger or both. “She’s not my girlfriend!” Ricky fired back. “I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“Yeah,” Carl agreed. “You’ve got Mother instead.”
“Shut your trap, bum-face!”
“Good one,” Carl said, smugly. “You’ve really injured me, Rickeroonie.”
Debbie didn’t like the direction this was heading. “Enough, you two. Mother is crying.”
“Mother is always crying,” Carl told her, and she couldn’t argu
