“Oh, good.” Mom’s expression relaxes as if my arrival meant the end to world hunger. “I was scared Clara and I would be gone before you showed. Liam must have found you. I know sometimes you visit with Addison and Reagan after school. Help me unzip the middle suitcase. The purple one. I wonder if I forgot something. Bre, start listing things I could have forgotten.”

Me? You’ve forgotten about me. “Where are you going?”

“Where are you going?” Liam ambles in and drops my backpack on my feet, permitting it to hit my toes. “Leave something?”

“Liam.” Mom glances at the clock on the microwave. “Unzip that middle suitcase. The purple one, then go tell Clara goodbye. We should have left five minutes ago if we’re going to make this work.”

“Good. This is good.” Liam’s shoulders loosen and then he mock swats the back of my head. “You heard Mom, start listing things, Encyclopedia-freak.”

“Don’t hit your sister and don’t call her that.” Mom reprimands him with all the passion of an answering machine recording as she drops the contents in her hands into the already overstuffed suitcase.

Mom straightens, places three fingers over her lips as she focuses on the mound of stuff, then mumbles a list of items—socks, pants, toothbrush...

I’m frozen to the ground, my entire body becoming solid. “What’s going on?”

Her head jerks up like she forgot I was here, which means she did. “Oh, yes. Bre. You are very much needed to make this work.”

She plucks an elastic band off her wrist and wrestles her short black hair into a ponytail. Mom rarely does this except when she’s flustered. It’s a vanity issue as the gray shows near the base of her neck. “I need you to take care of your younger siblings while I’m gone.”

There’s that word again—gone. Panic sets in as a trembling in my hands. “Will you please tell me what’s going on?”

“It’s Clara,” she says. “You know how upset she was that she didn’t graduate this spring and that your father and I are having her pay her tuition this year. Well, your father talked to the college. The administration worked with us and they agreed to let Clara into the fall courses she thought were closed. I’m driving her into Nashville tonight and we’re going to be staying with Nora.”

We’re? As in Mom and Clara are staying overnight with my oldest sister? “When will you be back?”

Mom’s face pinches like either I won’t like the answer or she won’t. The way my sugar level plummets, I’m thinking it’ll be me.

“Two weeks,” she says.

The world tilts. “Two weeks? I thought Dad was going to be working crazy hours and you were going to be taking time off from your job so you could handle his responsibilities and isn’t he supposed to be traveling for part of it and why are you leaving with Clara?”

Mom waves her hand to ward off my verbal meltdown as if she’s air patting me like a dog. “Calm down. Yes, your dad is busy. Yes, he will be out of town for part of it. Yes, I did take time off from work, but no, I won’t be here. I’ll be spending the two weeks with Clara. Your dad and I discussed it this morning. We have complete faith you can keep this house going. I’m sure Liam and Joshua will help, but, Bre, if anyone can run this house, it’s you. We know you can do this. Out of all of my children, you are the responsible one. My thinker.”

Mom grins at me like I should be happy. When my response is my wide-open mouth, she continues, “I need you to understand. Clara needs me.”

She needs her? Is Clara being blackmailed? Will Clara’s future be destroyed with a click of a button and one post on the internet? “Are you kidding me?”

“You’ll be fine,” she coos like I’m Elsie and she’s trying to convince me to bathe. “You’re the one that is always fine. You have practically raised yourself since birth. You run this household better than I do. Dad’s okay with you ordering takeout and everyone will have to understand you can’t get them to every practice.”

My head is shaking or it’s me shaking or it’s the entire kitchen shaking. “But you don’t understand. I need to talk to you.”

Liam and Clara walk into the kitchen. They’re both smiles until they see me. Actually, Liam still is, but Clara’s lips fall into a sneer.

“Liam, Clara, carry this stuff to the car,” Mom says. “The bursar’s office is giving us until six tonight so we can get you into those classes.”

My brother and sister hoist multiple boxes and luggage and Mom’s giving me a verbal list of things I already know, like what time to start baths and who is on what round of antibiotics and lots and lots of stuff that means she’s not listening to me.

Nausea roils in my stomach and her words become muffled and Clara and Liam laugh and my world is crashing around me. The pressure is mounting and my skin feels too tight.

“I need to talk to you,” I say, but Mom’s lecturing over me about how she’s concerned Zac isn’t coming straight home from school and that I need to stay vigilant with his time.

“There’s this thing that happened at school.” My voice is becoming higher in pitch and Mom’s progressed to describing Elsie’s problems now, and then Clara asks Mom where the keys are for the car, and when Mom pauses to answer my sister, I explode.

“They’re there, Clara! By the door. On the hook. Where the keys always are. Where everyone in this freaking room can see, but that’s not what it’s about, is it? You have to be the center of everything and right now the entire world does not revolve around you!”