All In by Jennifer Lynn Barnes EPUB & PDF – eBook Details
- Author: Jennifer Lynn Barnes
- Language: English
- Formats: PDF / EPUB
- Status: Available For Free Download
- Series: None
- Price: Free
- File Size: 1 MB
New Year’s Eve fell on a Sunday. This would have been less problematic if
my grandmother hadn’t considered “Thou shalt gather thy family for Sunday
dinner” an inviolable commandment, or if Uncle Rio had not appointed
himself the pourer of wine.
There was a lot of wine.
By the time we were clearing away the plates, it was pretty clear that
none of the adults would be driving themselves home anytime soon. Given
that my father had seven siblings, all of them married, several with kids a
decade or more my senior, there were a lot of “adults.” As I carried a stack of
plates into the kitchen, the dozen or so arguments brewing behind me were
almost, but not quite, drowned out by the sound of boisterous laughter.
Viewed from the outside, it was chaos. But viewed with a profiler’s eye,
it was simple. Easy to understand. Easy to make sense of. This was a family.
The kind of family, the individual personalities—those were there in the
details: shirts tucked and un-tucked, dishes chipped but handled with love.
“Cassie.” My great-uncle bestowed upon me a beatific, bleary-eyed smile
as I came into the kitchen. “You miss your family, eh? You come back to
visit your old Uncle Rio!”
As far as anyone in this house knew, I’d spent the past six months at a
government-sponsored gifted program. Boarding school, more or less. Parts
of that were true.
More or less.
“Bah.” My grandmother made a dismissive noise in Uncle Rio’s general
direction as she took a stack of plates from my hands and transferred them to
the sink. “Cassie did not come back for old fools who drink too much and
talk too loud.” Nonna rolled up her sleeves and turned on the faucet. “She
came back to see her nonna. To make up for not calling like she should.”
Two guilt trips, one stone. Uncle Rio remained largely unfazed. I, on the
other hand, felt the intended twinge of guilt and joined Nonna at the sink.
“Here,” I said. “Let me.”
Nonna harrumphed, but slid over. There was something comforting about
the fact that she was exactly the same as she’d always been: part mother hen,
part dictator, ruling her family with baked ziti and an iron fist.
But I’m not the same. I couldn’t dodge that thought. I’ve changed. The
new Cassandra Hobbes had more scars—figuratively and literally.
“This one gets cranky when she does not hear from you for too many
weeks,” Uncle Rio told me, nodding at Nonna. “But perhaps you are busy?”
His face lit up at the prospect, and he studied me for several seconds.
“Heartbreaker!” he declared. “How many boyfriends you hide from us now?”
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
Uncle Rio had been accusing me of hiding boyfriends from him for years.
This was the first and only time he’d ever been right.
“You.” Nonna pointed a spatula—which had appeared in her hand out of
nowhere—at Uncle Rio. “Out.”
He eyed the spatula warily, but held his ground.
“Out!”
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