For Brandi, things started to suck as soon as she got home and just got worse. Okay, she understood why her mom wanted to have a baby for Michael. It was insurance, in case they broke up. But who told her to have three of them? The triplets were a lot more trouble than just three kids spaced out over time. Plus they were more expensive because they couldn't wear each other's hand-me-downs.
So she threw everything in the washing machine together, because she couldn't be bothered to sort the laundry, including the triplets' new red pajamas. Then she gave them potato chips and fruit punch and put the TV on for them in the living room, rather than giving them apple slices and milk in the family room and staying with them.
After that, she went upstairs to put her backpack away, and noticed that Val's room looked like a tornado went through it. What had happened?
Whatever. It was none of her business. While she hadn't forgotten her revenge, it never occurred to her what the consequences would be, beyond embarrassing Valentine and ruining her perfect image.
Brandi went back downstairs and looked at what there was in the fridge for dinner.
There was a huge piece of raw meat in there, enough for several night's dinners. So was it pot roast, or roast beef? What was the difference, anyway?
Her mom called while she was trying to figure it out. So Valentine had gone off somewhere? Whatever.
Brandi looked up the difference between pot roast and roast beef on her phone. Pot roast was cooked in a pot, (duh!), with liquid and seasonings, while roast beef was cooked dry in the oven, which sounded simpler. So she turned the oven on, put the meat in a roasting pan, and shoved it in to cook.
Then she played around on her phone for a while.
She was interrupted by a crash from the living room. "Sh*t! What are you three doing in there?"
The triplets looked at her with guilty expressions on their faces. One of the side tables had gone over, and the lamp on it was broken. There were also fruit punch stains and grease spots all over the off-white sofa, plus potato chips ground into the carpet.
"It wasn't me!" Cherie cried, unless it was Kristal.
"Me either!" the other two chimed in.
"G****n it! Don't move, any of you. Stay right where you are!" Brandi went for the dust pan, broom, and vacuum cleaner.
On her way back she heard a key in the door. "I'm home!" Michael announced.
"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!," the triplets chorused. Brandi arrived just in time to see Remy step on a shard of ceramic lamp base and then start howling. And bleeding.
"What the h**l is going on? Get the first aid kit!" Michael asked. "Where's Valentine? I got a strange voicemail from her. Where is your mom? Come here, Remy honey." He put down his briefcase and his keys, then scooped up the bleeding child without regard for his clothes.
"Here," Brandi ran to get the kit, then ran back and tossed it to him. "I don't know where they are. Val's room looked like somebody tossed it. Mom called about—uh, about an hour ago and asked if Val was here, but I don't know anything else."
Michael carefully pulled a small piece of ceramic out of Remy's foot with a pair of tweezers while Brandi was talking, then disinfected the wound and put a bandaid on it, even though Remy was pitching a fit.
"D**n it. I'm going to have to take Remy to the HMO, on account of tetanus," he said. "Clean up this mess and tell your mother to call me. And tell Valentine to call, too. Watch the kids better than you were doing!"
"Oh, right, a tetanus shot," Brandi said unwisely.
Remy began howling twice as loud. "I don't wanna shot! I don't!"
Michael glared at Brandi. "Thank you so much for making matters even worse." Then he left, leaving her with Cherie, Kristal, and a huge mess.
"Go to the family room, and watch TV there. Don't touch anything and don't do anything else. Got it?!" Brandi yelled at them.
"We want Valentine," Cherie whispered, but they went.
With the twins out of the way, Brandi first cleaned up the broken lamp and vacuumed the carpet, then looked at the stained sofa. What took out stains? Bleach, of course!
So instead of using upholstery shampoo, Brandi went to the laundry area for the bleach. While she was there, she went to put the laundry into the dryer, but when she saw the clean, wet laundry, she froze.
Everything that was supposed to be white, was pink instead. Everything that was supposed to be blue was sort of pale purple, the yellow items were peach colored, and the other light colored items were all weird too. What? Why?
Brandi figured it was best to dry it and see if the color faded out, because colors were always darker when they were wet, so she switched it to the dryer and put it on the highest setting so it would all dry quicker. Taking the bleach, she poured some on each grease spot and punch stain, then let it sit.
She also forgot that dinner was usually more than just meat. In fact, she forgot about the meat, which she couldn't smell over the aroma of bleach anyway.
Then she played around on her phone some more.
Her mother came back and her first words were. "Is Valen—what's that smell?"
"Oh, it's the bleach I used on the sofa. The triplets spilled punch on it." Brandi tucked her phone away quickly.
"You used bleach on the sofa?" Her mother turned an incredulous face toward her, and rushed into the living room. "You stupid little—. It's covered in wool. Chlorine bleach destroys wool! That was a very expensive sofa, and you've ruined it!"
Brandi followed her. The off white sofa now had white splotches all over it. "Look, I didn't know what to do, all right? If Miss Chinky-ching-chong were here, it never would have happened!"
They hadn't realized that Michael had come in from the garage through the kitchen door, carrying Remy, who had gone to sleep in his arms. "What did you just call Valentine? And where is she?" He looked furious.
"She's not here," Brandi told him.
"Not here. After eight PM on a school night, she's not here?" he asked. "Then where is she? Has anyone called the police?"
"Valentine ran away!" Brenda blurted. "She was caught with acetaminophen with codeine pills in her purse and tested positive for opiates, so they called me to come get her. I yelled at her on the way home, and when my back was turned, she left."
"Ran away?" Brandi asked. "Nuh-uh! All her stuff is gone. People who run away travel light. She'd have needed a truck to carry all that stuff."
"Here," Michael shoved Remy at her mother, then bounded up the stairs. He came back in a moment, his face looking grey and gaunt.
"Brenda," he said, looking his wife in the eyes. "What. Did. You. Do?"
At the Rainbow Lodge:
As they went down the hall, Aunt Judy said, "Val, I don't think you know, but your mother—that is, Cammie—left you a trust fund to pay for college. Nobody can touch the principle until you turn eighteen. Even though costs have risen a lot, you should be able to graduate without much in the way of debt."
"I didn't know that. Brenda keeps sighing and talking about the costs of putting five kids through college and telling me I have to get scholarships." Valentine did not remember Cammie very well any more, not in terms of details, but she remembered the love between them.
By that time, the three of them had reached the end of the hall, where a closed door awaited them.
"Ready, everyone?" Aunt Judy asked.
Aunt Alison nodded, and she opened the door. Inside—.
It was a bedroom, not a large one, but one that was very well designed. The platform bed was tucked against the outer diagonal wall, so the window doubled as a skylight, and the white quilt on it was embroidered with snowflakes in different shades of blue and turquoise.
There was a comfortable-looking reading chair with a light over it, built in bookshelves, a short but wide dresser with a tall mirror which made the room look bigger, and a desk with a grow-light over a miniature orchid in full bloom.
All the fabrics were white or silvery grey, and the walls were a light azure, like a clear sky. The rug on the floor had a grey and white abstract pattern like clouds.
It was a room put together exactly for her by people who knew and loved her.
"It's beautiful! Oh, I love it! I can lie in bed and look right up at the sky!" Valentine Xuelan exclaimed.
"That door is a closet, and that one is to your own private bathroom. It only has a shower, not a tub, but it's all yours." Aunt Judy said, pointing. "We didn't want to influence your decision by showing you the room before you made up your mind.
"Our idea was, that since you want to study meteorology and since we're close to a Penn State campus where they offer it, you might want to live here rather than a dorm. It would also help keep the costs down."
"It's perfect. I'd even hoped I could stay here while I went—but I didn't want to ask, in case you said no." Valentine replied in complete truth.
Aunt Judy slipped an arm around Aunt Alison's waist and rested her head on Alison's shoulder. "I think we did good, huh, Ali?"
"Yeah, I think we hit it out of the ballpark this time," Aunt Ali replied.