“Can’t you stay a while longer?” Anne asked.
“It’s a long drive, and Mia’s got school tomorrow.”
“But it’s summer!”
“Her school is year round.” Laurie drifted to the corner of the kitchen, where she had plugged her phone in to charge and forgotten about it for the rest of the afternoon.
The whole front screen was filled with notifications, all missed calls and texts from Chris. She pocketed her phone without reading them.
“Where’s Mia?”
“Out front with her cousins,” Oakley answered.
Laurie moved through the door, and Oakley held a hand out to stop her.
“I can drive you home later,” she offered.
“He drove all the way down here.”
“Do youwantto go home?”
“Of course I want to go home,” she said quickly. She worried about whether her voice was utterly lacking in conviction, but maybe irritation was enough. “It’s my home.”
She softened the words with a hug, squeezing Oakley tight for a long moment before she let go.
Sisters. In a single afternoon, she could go from feeling like they didn’t see her at all to realizing that they saw far more than she’d realized.
They saw the things that she wasn’t ready to admit, even to herself.
Disregarded or psychoanalyzed, both extremes made her want to scream. But those women would go to the mat for her in a second, and she loved them for that.
“I’ll see you soon,” she said, hugging Anne. She kissed Akemi’s temple and then hurried towards the door.
“Mia!” she called, making Chris jump. “It’s time to go!”
She didn’t look at him directly. If she didn’t look at him, he couldn’t say anything harsh or hurtful. He could use the whole long drive home to cool down, and they could pretend that this had never happened.
“Do I have to?” Mia asked. Her face pulled together in a tragic expression, and Laurie’s heart hurt for her. Then Chris stood and shouted something. Laurie didn’t catch what he said, but Mia hurriedly hugged her cousins and ran to the car.
Laurie opened the passenger-side door and glanced back. Her three sisters stood on the lanai, watching her with varying degrees of concern.
She waved goodbye and got into the van.
13
Anne
“Eureka!”
Anne shifted sand toys and plastic boxes to one side, freeing her dad’s old power washer. She had come back from the hardware store ready to paint and then realized that the house needed some serious cleaning up before she got started.
Luckily the place already had everything that she needed, from the power washer to ladders and paint rollers. The only thing she’d had to buy was the paint, and those easily fit into the space she had left on her credit cards.
Anne had a whole collection of cards that she had gotten for the bonus points, which had made it possible for her and the kids to fly to Hawaii and back for free multiple times each year. She’d always paid them off in full, every month, and they had provided a much-needed cushion when divorce ate up all of her assets and legal fees ate up all of her savings.
She would be able to cover the rest of the basics that she needed to get up and running… but after that, she needed money coming inquick. The possibility of those high credit card interest rates compounding the debt that she’d already accrued was nauseating.
“Whatcha doin’?” Pete asked as she pulled the power washer around front.
