I didn’t choose the wench life. The wench life chose me.

When I pulled into the parking lot of Willow Creek High School on that late-spring morning, I had very little on my agenda. No doctor’s appointments for my big sister, no school obligations to shuttle my niece to. The only thing I needed to do was get my niece to the sign-ups for the Renaissance faire. We were five minutes late, so it was going great so far.

Caitlin huffed from the back seat as I threw my little white Jeep in park. “Em, we’re late!” She managed to stretch both my name and that last word out into at least three syllables. “What if they don’t let me sign up? All my friends are doing this, and if I can’t, I’ll—”

“They’ll let you sign up.” But of course she was out before I’d even unbuckled my seat belt. I wasn’t going to call her back. I didn’t have that kind of authority over her. At barely ten years older, I was more a big sister than an aunt. When I’d first come to stay with my older sister and her daughter, April had tried to get Cait to call me “Aunt Emily,” but that was only a short hop away from Auntie Em and Kansas jokes so we’d abandoned it quickly. My relationship with the kid had settled into more of a friendship with overtures of Adult In Charge.