"Whoa, whoa," Tina said, "I can’t let you live in a group home! You are my nephew!"

"Well you are my only blood relative, but you don’t have to…"

"Oh yes I do," Tina insisted, "Christian, you are the only blood relative I have as well, we have to stick together."

"You would really do that for me?" Christian asked, "you don’t even know me."

"And yet you traveled to New York to see me without even knowing if I’m the right person," Tina said.

Christian couldn’t hide his smile, "I would love to live with you Aunt Tina."

Tina smiled, "good, now let’s get Patty on the phone shall we?"

Christian grinned. It was a signature Kennard smile.

+++

"Did you get it now?" Bette asked patiently looking over to 12 year old Angie who looked perplexed.

"Angie you’re stupid," 5 year old Andy commented from his seat across the table.

"Shut up, you have addition and subtraction not algebra!" Angelica said frustrated.

"Andy don’t be mean to your sister," Bette scolded.

Andy just snickered mischievously and Angelica scoffed whining, "mom!"

Bette almost laughed at the cuteness between Andy’s troublemaker face and Angelica’s pout, but she held back.

"Okay let me explain it again," Bette said, "look, the way to figure out ‘x’ is to get it alone. So you have to get rid of everything else by doing the opposite and putting it on the other side."

"Okay," Angie said looking down at the problem.

"Okay, let’s do an easy one," Bette said, "5x-5=5. Okay so first you have to do everything that’s not multiplication or division."

"So the ‘-5′?" Angelica asked.

"Okay, so you have to do the opposite of that, what do you do?" Bette asked.

"Add?"

"Yes, so ‘-5+5′ is what?"

"0."

"And what you do to one side you do to the other," Bette said.

Angelica nodded in understanding and said, "so now ’5x=10.’"

"That’s right, very good," Bette encouraged, "now the other number. What is that 5 doing there?"

"Um…multiplication?"

"Yes, any number directly next to a letter is multiplication," Bette explained, "now do the opposite."

Angelica nodded and started writing on the paper. Andy walked over to Bette and handed her a paper. Bette looked at the paper and looked down at Andy in shock.