The front door opened. Our mother glanced toward the living room. “Is that Meg already?”
“It’s Amy!” Beth cried, darting from the kitchen.
“She must have got an early start.” Mom shuffled toward the living room, delivering a pat on my shoulder as she passed.
I wiped my hands on a dish towel and followed her.
“Jokies!” Amy disentangled herself and grabbed me, her smooth cheek pressing mine. That’s what she called me, what she’d always called me since she was old enough to think the nickname was funny.
I patted her back awkwardly. “Hey, Ames.” I didn’t call herPrincess, the way Daddy did. Even though she looked the part: deep-blue eyes, tiny waist, funny snub nose. Like the princess in Disney’sTangled, with a choppy blond haircut that would have looked at home in New York’s Fashion District.
“Can I get your stuff from the car?” Beth offered.
“Not yet.” Amy stretched luxuriously, her crop top sliding up to reveal her pale, flat stomach. “I want to enjoy being home for a while.”
“Come into the kitchen, then,” our mother said. “Plenty of work to go around.”
Amy pouted. “But I just got here. Aren’t we going to watch the parade?”
Momma smiled. “Turn on the TV. And then you can set the table.”
Under our mother’s direction, we executed her Day of Thanksgiving Plan, scrubbing, chopping, grating, and arranging to the muffled sound of the Macy’s parade. Amy was in the dining room, setting the table the way our mother liked, with the good china that had belonged to her grandmother and the pinecone turkeys Amy made in second grade.
“The minute I walk into this house, I feel like I’m twelve,” she observed.
I grinned. “You act like you’re twelve.”
She stuck out her tongue.
“Proving my point,” I said, and she laughed.
Beth paused in her straightening of the living room to turn up the volume on the television. “Momma, come quick! The Rockettes are on!”
Amy dropped a handful of silverware. “Chorus line!”
I watched, bemused, as our mother left her work in the kitchen. My sisters positioned themselves on either side of her, lining up in front of the TV, giggling and grabbing each other for balance. Momma couldn’t kick, but she laughed and lurched along with them.
They’d done this before, I realized. Watched the parade together, stepping along with the Rockettes, while I was off with Daddy feeding the homeless.
Amy stumbled. Laughed. “We need Meg.”
I jumped in at the end of the line, wrapping my arm around Beth, matching my steps with my sisters’, doing my best to support Mom in the middle. We giggled and kicked our way to the end of the song, hopping and breathless.
“Ooph!” Amy collapsed into a chair. “That’s it. I’m done.”
“That was so fun,” Beth said.
Our mother eased herself onto the couch, smiling. “I always wanted to visit Radio City Music Hall. See the Rockettes in person.”
Which was news to me. She’d never said anything. Never taken a day off in her life. “Maybe you should come for a visit,” I suggested.
But she wasn’t listening to me. “Have you heard anything yet from Branson?” she asked Beth.
Beth shook her head.
“Who?” I asked.
“Nothing,” Beth said.
