He sighs so loudly into the phone, it hurts my ears, and I know we’re both thinking the same thing. When we were thirteen, my mom disappeared for a few days. Luca came over and cooked up a pretty convincing lie to tell Emmy, said he was staying over because we were helping Maggie with some huge jewelry order. Emmy has an enormously sensitive bullshit detector. She showed up an hour later at our apartment, a casserole dish for dinner in hand. When we couldn’t produce Maggie, she hauled me home with her, despite my protests.
When Mom came home two days later, she went to Emmy’s looking for me. They had a huge blowout, Mom screaming at her that she had no right to take her kid, and Emmy calmly—?but with a firm fury to her tone that scared the shit out of me, to be honest—?explaining to her that I wasn’t old enough to be on my own for that long.
Mom went apoplectic. She grabbed my arm so hard, it bruised—?the only time she’s ever laid a less than gentle hand on me—?and took me home. She didn’t talk to Emmy for a year after that, and even though a sort of strained peace exists between them now, their interactions are still awkward as hell.
Luca tries to bring it up every now and then—?like now, when he knows I’m in a situation that’s less appealing to me than a Brazilian wax—?but I always shut him down. I can’t leave her. She’s my mom; I’m her kid. We belong together. I start to tell him this, to tell him about the New York audition trip and how she organized my lighthouse room and managed not to break anything, but even in my head, it sounds like an excuse.
“Okay, fine,” Luca says. “I’m training the new girl in an hour, but I’m done at six and then I’m coming over, no arguments.”
“You don’t have to do that—?wait. What? What new girl?”
“She’s—?”
“Luca, dammit, I needed that job.” We’d talked about this before I left for Boston. Mom’s online jewelry shop and occasional waitressing jobs are spotty at best. She still gets survivor benefits from the military every month, but it’s not enough. She has a little from my dad’s personal life insurance too, but again it barely covers our food, much less my lessons with Mr. Wheeler, my piano instructor. Consequently, I’ve had some sort of job since my age hit double digits.
“Claws in, cat,” Luca says. “You know you’ve always got a job here if you want it.”
“You’re sure?”
“I’m sure. You’re golden. Just hide your tips in a safe place, if you catch my drift.”
“Do I ever miss your drift?”
He grunts acknowledgment, knowing he’s got a point. Mom’s been known to . . . borrow from me, rooting through my room in whatever dump we’re living in until she finds a twenty or two. Sometimes it goes toward a phone bill, a meal. Sometimes it doesn’t.
“Besides,” he says as I pull a loose piece of wicker off my bike’s basket, “it’s Eva.”
“Who’s Eva?”
He pauses and takes a deep breath. “Eva Brighton? She’s my mom’s friend’s daughter. Remember?”
My stomach plummets to my feet. “Oh, crap. I’m sorry, I totally forgot.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. God, I suck, Luca.”
“Stop. You have a few things on your mind.”
I nod, even though he can’t see me, but dammit. Hurricane Maggie strikes again, obliterating everything in my life but her. About a month ago, Emmy’s childhood friend Dani Brighton, who lived in Brooklyn with her daughter, died suddenly. She taught ballet at a fancy company in the city, and during a practice, her appendix ruptured. After surgery, everything seemed fine, but then she got some infection they couldn’t get under control. She died a week later. Emmy was devastated. Still is, I would assume. Plus, she not only lost her friend; she gained a daughter. Emmy and Dani only talked sporadically over the past several years, so when a lawyer contacted her and reminded her that she’d agreed to be Eva’s guardian years before, Emmy was thrown for a major loop.
“Dani never got married,” Luca told me when it first happened. We were at LuMac’s sharing a plate of pizza fries while Luca pretended to roll silverware.
“Did they contact Eva’s dad, though?” I asked.
He broke a long string of cheese and wound it into his mouth. “Can’t really contact a guy whose name you don’t know.”
“Oh.”
“Actually, I think Eva knows his name, but there’s nothing to legally bind them. The only thing on her birth certificate is ‘father unknown.’”
“Wow.”
“Yeah.”
Right before I left for Boston, the Michaelsons launched into full panic mode getting ready for Eva to come, transforming what was once Macon’s bedroom-turned-storage room into an inhabitable bedroom. Emmy was a total mess, reading through her old self-help books on grief and mourning and healing. It made Luca nervous as hell. Since their dad left, he and his older brother, Macon, have been super protective of Emmy.
And, of course, I forgot all about this huge change in my best friend’s life, because I’m me.
