Not wanting to continue more of the back and forth my gaze fell to the TV in her living room. It was paused on an image from a scene I knew well. “What are you doing?”
She followed me to her couch, and I sat on one end. “Thinking about Nanna.”
“And watching the school’s play of Peter Pan?”
She laughed and sat beside me on the couch, but she didn’t sit on the far side, which would’ve been normal. She sat right beside me so our legs lined up and touched. “Nanna made my Tinkerbell outfit.”
“I remember. My mom purchased my Peter Pan outfit from a supplier in New York and yours looked much better.”
The all-school play happened after the frog incident so Katy darted around to avoid me at all costs at that point in our relationship. Rather than hand me the thimble, she chucked it across the room and hit me in the face each time we practiced. I’d been scared crapless the day of our performance, but when it came time, Katy did what she was supposed to do.
It may have been the last time she acted like a normal human.
She laid her head on my shoulder. “I miss her so much.”
I positioned my arm behind her, not giving her support but bringing her closer. How did I ever compete with the relationship she experienced with her grandma? Especially now.
Katy unwrapped her hash browns from the diner and took a small bite as I hit play on the remote right at the start of act two on Peter Pan.
“You didn’t do what you were supposed to,” she said around a bite of food as eleven-year-old me jumped from one of the props on the stage.
“What are you talking about?” I asked looking at her. “I memorized my lines. I hit every cue.” My mother thought it meant I’d be destined for the stage, but I had no interest in acting.
I’d only signed up to be in the play after I found out Katy’s grandmother forced her to participate.
“No, dummy. I thought you’d marry a rich supermodel, have seven kids, and live an outrageous lifestyle. I should be stalking your vacation pictures on Facebook and silently cursing you.”
Why in the hell did people keep think I wanted so many children? “Is that what you want?”
She shook her head. “It would make it easier.”
It wasn’t the time to laugh, but a chuckle escaped anyway as her head bobbed on my shoulder. She thought watching my supermodel wife post bikini pictures on Instagram would be easier? “Me getting married would somehow make this easier for you?”
She’d been pretty pissed off about my fake fiancée, for her words to be true.
Katy sighed. “No,” she said and then shoved the rest of her hash brown in her mouth and ended our conversation.
17
Katy
My mother poked her head out of my closet, holding up three pairs of identical black leggings. Fingers crossed she didn’t ask where I wore those.
She shook them in my direction. “Katy, you own tons of black, but it’s all athletic gear.”
I collected each pair of pants from her, tugging harder on the last pair before she let go. “Yeah, sometimes I need to be limber.”
She gave me a puzzled look and then turned back to the closet where she’d done significant damage to my organizational system. “I didn’t realize you’d started working out.”
If that’s what she wanted to go with, it was fine for me. “Yeah, it’s something like that.”
She huffed and rehung the white lacy summer dress I’d been planning to wear right before Labor Day but never got the chance.
“We will have to go to Clearwater and see if we can find you something appropriate to wear. There is no time to order anything from the internet now.”
Here came the fight I’d worked hard to put off. “Mom, I’m not wearing black to Nanna’s funeral. I’m wearing lilac.” I’d already decided on my dress. Nanna loved it. She even called it her favorite and always complimented me what I wore it. It reminded me they were her favorite flower and color.
If we’d respected her wishes, lilac would be prominent at her funeral. Not the white lilies my mother spent hundreds of dollars on as a special order from the town’s florist shop.
