“Honey, come here!” daddy yelled from the kitchen. He was leaning into the hallway, with his hand covering the receiver on the phone.
“One minute, the girls are wrapping up their reading lesson.”
“Now. This can’t wait.”
Mommy furrowed her brows at the urgency in daddy’s voice, stood up stiffly from her chair, and marched over to the kitchen. I held my breath. This sudden escalation in emotion left me unnerved. Life is better when my parents are in a good mood.
“This had better be important,” mommy said.
She clasped her hand over her mouth as daddy whispered something into her ear.
“They did what?” mommy said incredulously. “I mean, I know James doesn’t get along all that well with us, but for Lydia to try and report us for that.”
“I know, right?” daddy said. “No one gets to tell us how to manage our family.”
Mommy leaned back into the living room. I couldn’t help but notice how wide her eyes had gotten.
“Elaine, Annabelle, put your books away and go work on your math sheets. I need to talk to your father.”
My sister and I shared a desk with seats on either side so that we faced each other as we did our schoolwork. We stayed at our desks as mommy and daddy retreated downstairs to talk privately. Elaine had already made it half-way through the math book for the schoolyear while I was only a quarter of the way into it. If we finished our curriculum ahead of schedule in the spring, we could begin our summer break early. I’d never managed to do that yet, and at the pace I was going this year, it would be unlikely that I would be able to pull it off.