“And what about us, Mom?” Her eyes are clear green and worried. “What do we do now? I was the one who wanted to come here way more than you, and now it’s a big fat mess. All because I wanted to play Truth or Dare? Like, I keep going back to that. If I hadn’t—”
I squeeze her hand. “No, babe. It would have happened anyway. It needed to happen. And it was good to find the gun.”
“Good? There’s nothing good about a gun. And now it’s gone, but Anne hates us.”
I jiggle her hand. “She doesn’t hate us.”
“The things she said—”
“She was angry.”
“Bastard daughter?”
Lifting my head, I squint toward my cell. “What time is it?” The sun is well up. I hear gulls.
“Seven.”
“I can’t do this at seven,” I breathe, sinking back as the details of last night’s fight pinch at my mind.
“But what do we do now?” Joy repeats with even greater urgency. “Do we stay or leave? Do we take Papa down to the shop? I don’t know if I want to be with Anne if she’s going to be that ugly. How can sisters treat sisters like that?”
“Sisters are people first,” I say. No, not the discussion I want to get into now, but I am my daughter’s mother, and the buck stops here. More to the point, knowing her as I do, this daughter won’t let it go. “Sisters are related, not identical. They have different personalities and different life experiences.”
“But you grew up together. You lived in this house together as many years as you lived away. You ate the same food and celebratedthe same holidays. You rode in the backseat of Papa’s old wooden Jeep, and you ganged up on him. Doesn’t that count for anything?”
It did. Absolutely. But shit happens. It’s part of life. How to prepare her for that? How to explain family angst in a way that doesn’t put her off family altogether? My greatest dread in conceiving Joy as I did and raising her alone isn’t in not having back-up when we both have the flu. It’s in passing on the belief that living alone is best.
“Family can be a challenge,” I say, “but the alternative is worse. That’s why we’re here, Joy. My sisters and I experienced life together but differently, and we’ve been apart for twenty years. What you’re seeing now is a… rapprochement.”
She knows the word. She singled it out of a book not a month ago. We discussed its meaning, as well as the beauty of the sound. Ra-proche-ment. Softproche,Frenchment.
I had hoped the memory would lift her spirits, but she pouts. “A rapprochement is happy. This isn’t.”
“It will be. ‘The best way out is always through,’ Robert Frost says.”
“I know, Mom. You’ve told me a gazillion times, but you didn’t saythroughmeant war.”
“It isn’t war. It’s negotiation.”
“Like give and take? Like bargaining? I didn’t hear that last night, and anyway, where does that leave us now?” Her voice quivers. “Anne let me work at the shop, but I don’t know if she will anymore. If Anne doesn’t want me around and Jack doesn’t want me around—”
Sitting up fast, I take her shoulders. “Anne wants you. She loves having you here. Anyone watching can see how proud she is to have you at the shop. You’re her family.”
“Jack isn’t, but I thought he liked me. He promised I could be his intern, and now it’s Monday, and I’m still here.”
I smile, grateful to have definitive word on this, at least. “He’s coming for you at eight.”
Joy’s pretty heart-shaped face, framed with wispy curls, lightsup with elation at this news, but only for an instant. In the next, the worry is back. “Then what about Anne? What if she’s expecting me to go down to the square when I wake up?”
“I’ll text her.”
“But what aboutPapa?”
Papa is in his own world. I had begun to think of morning as his good time, but not this day. He doesn’t look up when Joy and I enter, doesn’t respond when she says a bright, “Hi, Papa.” Still in his pajamas, which is itself unheard of, he sits at the kitchen table with his hair uncombed and his salty brows knit. He looks to be brooding. Actually, he looks defeated, to judge from the way his arms hang at his sides.
The smell of fresh coffee is strong. Margo has likely been the one to put it in front of him, but he seems oblivious to her as she leans against the counter holding a mug of her own. There is warning in her arched brow when our eyes meet. Last night is on hold. Tom Aldiss is front and center.
“Good morning, Dad,” I say. He glances only halfway up. “Joy wants breakfast before she leaves,” I add, careful not to identify who she’ll be leaving with, since Lord knows how he’d react to that. “I’m making her eggs. Do you want some?”
