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"What? No?"
Rita blinked, then smiled at me. "My sweet little sister, playing stubborn with me again. Every time you say no, and every time you end up going along with it anyway."
Joseph Gilbert, my brother-in-law, chimed in with a grin.
"Exactly. Come on, don't make a fuss. It's settled. Over the holiday, the whole family rides in your motorhome and we all go on a trip together."
Maureen, his mother, was busy stuffing the cherries into her bag as she said cheerfully,
"That's right. We're one family, no need to talk like strangers. Traveling together is lively. Going all by yourself would be so lonely."
Denys nodded along too.
"And don't forget to bring that Romanée-Conti you've got tucked away. We'll all drink it together."
The Romanée-Conti.
That was the bottle I'd been saving for some important moment down the road.
This Denys really didn't hold back.
Looking at this shameless family in front of me.
I felt like I was watching a pack of demons prancing around before my eyes.
I half wished I could pull a magic staff out of my ear and smash them all dead with one swing.
Choking down my anger, I said,
"I told you. No means no!"
Rita and her whole family went quiet for a moment.
Then Rita gave a cold, contemptuous little laugh and asked,
"Little sister, what's gotten into you today?"
"I'm your older sister!"
Thinking of everything from my past life, especially that exact same look in her eyes while I was in prison.
I clenched my fists.
"Every time we travel, I'm the one who pays. Why on earth would I agree to go anywhere with you?"
Rita said, put out,
"Little sister, what kind of talk is that? We're family. How can you be so calculating?"
Joseph shook his head.
"Right, come on. Talking about money makes it awkward, doesn't it? We're family. What's there to talk about money for? We're not outsiders!"
I looked at them.
"Not talk about money? Then what should we talk about? You treat me like your wallet? On top of that I'm supposed to play nanny to your two kids, and then thank you for the privilege?"
Joseph's face went cold.
"That's an ugly thing to say."
"When we go out to have fun, you don't expect to pay? You want to freeload off our family?"
I said furiously,
"When did I ever freeload? Which time wasn't I the one paying?"
Joseph kept his face cold.
"The way you talk, you'd think you paid for everything. Did I not pay anything? Last time we traveled, didn't I treat you to breakfast?"
He nearly stopped my heart with that one.
I asked,
"That trip was three days, nine meals. I paid for eight of them, plus every hotel room. I spent over twenty thousand. That one meal you treated us to cost a few bucks, a bowl of wonton soup and one donut each. How do you have the nerve to bring it up?"
Joseph's expression flickered, and he said guiltily,
"A few bucks is still treating you. Whose fault is it you didn't eat more? If you'd eaten ten bowls of wonton soup, would I not have treated you? I'd still have paid. You can't put it away and that's my fault?"
His twisted logic nearly broke me. I shot back,
"Fine. Let's leave the food and the rooms out of it."
"Then let me ask you. Last time we went traveling, you said there was a problem with your bank card and asked me to front the airfare, said you'd pay it back the next day."
"It's been half a year now. Have you paid it back?"
Joseph frowned, and his mother, Maureen, burst out,
"Girl, now you're being unreasonable. What's the harm in covering the airfare?"
"Family, and now you're keeping score?"
"Besides, after that trip, didn't I bring you a cake and some bananas?"
"Think about it carefully!"
I was so angry I laughed.
She had brought over a cake and some bananas.
But that cake had been sitting in their house for days before the trip, unfinished, and she handed it off to me to eat. It gave me diarrhea for three days.
As for the bananas, they'd been sitting who knows how long, all of them rotten, with tiny black gnats crawling over them.
