Paige does not do this. She goes into the living room and closes the drapes Grant opened, blocking out the sunlight, then she crawls under a bunched-up duvet on the couch that smells like sour milk, and she begs for sleep.
2
CORA
Nobody will eat the chocolate chip pancakes, but they complete the breakfast table. If I take the yolks out of the egg bake, then it will make up for pancake calories. Nobody will drink the orange juice either, but it looks nice in tiny glass cups next to the coffee, and it’s Sunday, damn it, so everything should look nice, even if it’s just the three of us and I’m the only one who cares. It’s the same thing as making your bed in the morning. You don’t leave it messy like a slob just because it will only get used again that night. You make it so when you pass by the room, everything looks tidy and put together and right.
When Mia trudges into the kitchen wearing flannel pajama pants, she grabs a piece of toast and keeps walking toward the door.
“Where are you going?” I ask. I didn’t expect fanfare over the breakfast spread, but maybe at least aGood morning.
“Sasha’s.”
“In that?” I ask, and she looks down at her pajamas but clearly doesn’t see a problem. “Yeah. Can I take the car?”
“It’s Sunday,” I say, trying to keep the annoyance out of my voice. She knows that’s the unspoken rule that even if we miss meals during the week, with Finn’s late nights and her volleyball practices, on Sundays we make time. Mia looks past me to the table.
“Oh, but you’re doing Weight Watchers again, I thought,” she says, matter-of-factly. She’s not trying to be hurtful. I am doing the program again, but explaining that you still actually eat meals on it seems pointless. She eyes the stack of chocolate chip pancakes and goes to take one off the top.
I hand her the car keys. It’s good to see her getting out of the house and seeing friends, if I’m honest. She’s been moping for months since her breakup with Josh or John or whatever his name was. How she can date the guy for too little a time span for me to recall his name but can cry over him for an eternity is beyond me.
“You can have the car, but help me with something.”
“What?” she says, hand on one hip, ready to be inconvenienced by whatever it is I have to ask.
“There’s that charity dinner next week. It’s at Paige and Grant’s restaurant in town. Come down and help me with the silent auction or serve tables or something.”
“Ugh” is all I get from her.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Be home by dinner. We’re eating at the table.”
When she’s gone, I catch a quick look at my reflection in the sliding glass door that leads to the deck. Before I can scrutinize whether Weight Watchers is working, I see past my image and into the backyard of the elusive Georgia Kinney, who is as rare a sight as a snow leopard in the wild. I run out to the edge of the deck and open the camera on my phone, zooming in, to get as close a view as I can. She’s lifting her baby into a swing, the plastic kind with the foot holes and safety bar. She pushes her, mindlessly. She doesn’t coo at her, and she doesn’t scroll on her phone, ignoring her, either. She just stares off, absently.
If I were that freaking gorgeous, I’d be thrilled all the time. I’d live in strappy tops without worrying my back fat would squish through them like a tube of biscuits you whack against the counter to split open. I’d wear my sunshine-colored hair loose down my back and never expose my porcelain skin to the sun, not once. Granted, she is a good fifteen years younger than me, and her husband for that matter—the youngest mom in the neighborhood, I think. She’s in her mid-twenties, it looks like.
It might be pathetic, but I don’t get why she doesn’t want to make friends with any of us. I mean, it’s a little snotty. Finn hung out with her husband, Lucas, a couple times, so I know she’s from England. Maybe she thinks she’s better than us if she’s English, and she probably is, calling gasolinepetrol, and a cell phone amobile: they always sound so fancy. But they have been living across the street over a year now, and she hasn’t even said more than a quick hello. She didn’t even write a thank-you note for the mascarpone pound cake I dropped off when they moved in. It won a prize at the state fair, for God’s sake. She could have at least returned the plate. Still, she looks so glamorous, and her husband’s a judge, and I will win her over.
“Are you spying on them?” Finn asks, and I jump and clutch my chest. I whip around to see him standing in the open doorframe, smirking at me.
“No! Of course not.” I push past him and shut the door, a little annoyed at the interruption.
“Then, what were you doing?” he asks, amused.
“Finn,” I say firmly as if that’s an answer to his question. I click the lid down on the Keurig and listen to it sputter and drip.
“Look at all this,” he says, sitting at the table and filling his plate with egg casserole. I place his coffee in front of him and sit, serving myself a pancake.
“I thought you were doing the Weight Watchers thing again.”
I clench my jaw and look at the ceiling, then exhale loudly in annoyance.
“Sorry,” he says, flashing his palms in defense. I decide to change the subject so we don’t start the day with tension.
“It’s just that I find it off-putting that they’re so antisocial. The O’Briens lived there eleven years before the Kinneys moved in, and they were over all the time. It feels—I don’t know—uncomfortable that they can’t be normal. I like to know my neighbors. We should all be friends, look out for each other.”
“He seems normal,” Finn says. “Well, we only had a beer a couple times, but he seems okay. I think she’s a—whatchamacallit—a wallflower.”
“What?” I laugh.
