ALECNEITHER  OF  MY   BROTHERS  TRUSTED  ME   TO   DRIVE,  AND   I  COULDN’Treally blame them, not after  the  completely  immature  way I’d handled things last night and this morning. I still didn’t want to believe I’d been such an idiot. I could count on one hand the number of times I had actually been drunk in my life, and the other times had ended with me hugging a toilet, not showing up at a woman’s house and making a fool of myself.Despite the three-and-a-half-hour drive, I didn’t have much time to think about any of this since Eoin was sleeping in the back, and Brody was driving. When Brody drove, he liked to either talk…or sing. My brother had a lot of talents, but music wasn’t one of them. Not only was he completely tone deaf, but he had no rhythm, not when it came to music anyway. And he never knew the lyrics.None of that, however, stopped him from torturing people whenever the need struck him. Such as when he was in t

ALECIN   THE    PAST,  KELI    HAD    SENT    ME    PICTURES   OF    EVANNE   IN    HERcostumes and a couple pictures of her while trick-or- treating. I’d never been a part of the process.It was quite entertaining, actually. Especially since Evanne hadn’t been able to decide on just one costume when I’d taken her shopping yesterday. Now that Keli was here, Evanne insisted on modeling each costume for both of us and having us decide which one she should wear.“Which one?” Evanne asked as she twirled, her shiny skirt billowing out around her. “Princess, cheetah, or ninja?” “That’s quite the range you have there, mo chride,” I saidwith a chuckle.“I have potential,” she said. She was practically beaming. “Everybody says so.”Keli and I burst out laughing, the sound easing the tension between us. She’d been perfectly polite from the moment she’d gotten here, but I still didn’t trust her. I doubted I’d ever

LUMENWHILE THE OTHER KIDS KEPT THEMSELVES BUSY WITH THEIR MATHworksheets, I called Evanne up to my desk so we could go over what she’d missed the previous week. As she skipped up to the desk I kept next to mine specifically for instances like this, I was relieved to see that she didn’t seem to have been negatively affected by what had happened.“You and I are going to talk about the lessons you missed last week,” I began. “Anything that you don’t understand, you need to ask about, because I won’t know how to help otherwise.”“I’m glad to be back,” Evanne said as she squirmed in her chair. “Mommy and I had fun, but I don’t like missing school.”“Well, we missed you too.” I wasn’t sure if that sounded sincere or lame, but it was all I had to go with at the moment. “How about we start with the spelling test you missed?”“I studied yesterday before I went trick-or-treating.” She pulled out a piece of