“Well.” Meghan smiled and shrugged. “To be fair, you were doing most of it.”
“I don’t know about that,” Rachel said quietly.
“Well.” Meghan sniffed and looked away. “That’s why I kept Nathan. Because I wanted someone to love me. Kind of hard for you to understand, I know—”
“It’s not hard for me to understand—”
“You don’t seem to need anyone. I always feel like a completely pathetic loser next to you.”
Meghan spoke without spite, surprising Rachel with her hard honesty. “If I don’t seem to need anyone,” she answered, “it’sbecause I don’t let myself. I needed Dad, and look where that got me.”
“You could do something else now,” Meghan said after a moment. “You don’t have to take care of us anymore, Rachel.”
Rachel stared at her sister, the proud tilt of her chin, the need visible in her eyes. “I don’t want to abandon you.”
“You won’t. I’ve been thinking about quitting at the pub and starting a childminding business. I know it will be difficult with Mum, but the hours would be better for me and I can work from home, with Nathan there. Abby Rhodes has said she’d love to have Noah here.”
“What?” Rachel shook her head slowly. “I had no idea.”
“I know. And it might be too difficult.” She glanced wryly around the kitchen. “We’d have to keep the house clean, for starters. Safeguarding rules and all that.” She smiled uncertainly, and Rachel smiled back. She felt as if Meghan had just off-loaded a whole lot of information, and she needed time to process it.
“Well,” she finally said. “Plans.”
“You should have plans too. You could do a part-time course or something....”
“Actually, I have looked into it.” She’d written the University of Lancaster for information on part-time degree courses. The brochure had come last week, and she hadn’t yet dared to open it. Hope was dangerous. Losing it was hard. “Mum is going to need full-time care, Meghan. We can divide it between us, but—”
“And don’t forget Lily.”
“Lily will be going to university—”
“Maybe,” Meghan said quietly, “you’d better ask her about that.”
Rachel felt a clanging inside her, as if she’d missed the last step in the staircase. “What do you know that I don’t?”
“Nothing,” Meghan answered. “Because I think you already know it. But you’re pretending you don’t, just like I did.”
Rachel shook her head. “No . . .”
“She doesn’t like biology, Rachel. She doesn’t want to go to Durham. You can’t foist your dreams onto somebody else.”
“Her exam is in a week.”
Meghan shrugged. “That doesn’t change anything.”
A little while later Rachel stood in the doorway of her mother’s bedroom and watched as Lily showed Janice the Mad Scientist cartoon strip. Rachel had glanced at a few of the drawings, quick pen strokes that managed to capture the lovable ditziness of the scientist whose experiments always went wrong but managed to produce good results. Janice’s eyes were following the cartoon, although she couldn’t speak. She managed to nod in what seemed like approval, and Lily smiled.
“And here’s another one....” She showed her mother another drawing, and Janice’s mouth jerked in a half smile; the left side of her face was still paralyzed.
Rachel leaned against the doorway, taking in a scene she’d never expected to see. Lily enjoying time with her mother, when she’d always avoided her before. Things actually working, even if it was in a completely unexpected way.
Lily looked up and caught her eye, and Rachel stepped into the room. “Hey there,” she said, smiling at her mother, whose face jerked again in response. “Those cartoons are pretty cool, aren’t they?”
“I didn’t think you’d looked at them,” Lily said. Her voice sounded guarded, unsure.
“I glanced at a few when I was taking your dirty washing from your room. May I see them now, though? Properly?”
Wordlessly, Lily handed the sheets over, and Rachel spent a few minutes silently studying the drawings, smiling a bit as Mad Scientist Girl’s potion exploded in a sea of bubbles, creating asoft landing for her sidekick cat, who had been thrown up in the air by the explosion. “Clever,” she murmured.
