Past summers when the kids visited, I’d wake before them and sit out on the patio drinking my coffee until Samson, always the first one awake, tumbled outside and begged for me to take him swimming. Afterward we’d go to the beach, and he and I would sit side by side in the sand, talking about baseball and poisonous plants as the world grew brighter around us. Mia and Kitty were usually still asleep when we’d return, their pillows dotted with drool. But as I peeked into the living room now, I was surprised to find Kitty and Mia wide awake. Mia sat cross-legged on the sofa bed, spooning cereal into her mouth as she stared at her phone with her headphones in her ears. Kitty’s arm was draped over the back of the couch, and she appeared lost in thought as she prodded the succulents lined up on the windowsill.
I stepped into the kitchen before the girls could see me and scooped grounds into the coffee maker. When I turned around, I nearly jumped out of my skin at the sight of Kitty behind me, her long, tangled hair reminding me of an apparition from a horror film.
“Shit!” I held my hand over my racing heart. “Crap, I mean.”
Kitty rolled her eyes. “Even Jonathan Swift used the word ‘shit,’ you know.”
“He’s the guy who wrote about eating babies, right?”
“Yup.”
“Kitty, you’re... thirteen. How have you read that?”
“Oh, I haven’t,” she said. “But I’ve readaboutit. Mia had to read it last year, and she told me about the baby eating, so I looked him up.”
“Well, if ‘shit’ is all right with J. Swift, then it’s all right with me.” I took the milk from the fridge and set it on the counter. “Grab me a mug?”
A cabinet door creaked open, and then Kitty went quiet. Wondering what the holdup was, I turned to find her holding a souvenir mug with a map of the Bahamas I’d bought my first charter season. She stared down at it, running a finger along its side, where the handle used to be.
“Kitty?”
She passed the mug to me, her chin quivering. “Is that the one Sam broke?”
I looked down at the mug in my hands. Last summer, Kitty and Samson had trapped a caterpillar inside of it. Kitty had coaxed the caterpillar onto her finger, then jerked it into Samson’s face with a laugh, and he’d dropped the mug, the handle cracking clear off. Embarrassed, Samson had refused to talk to Kitty for hours. That night, after emptying a glass jar and duct-taping mesh from an old pool skimmer around the top, Kitty and Mia sat watching the caterpillar, wondering what type of butterfly it would be.That’s a tent caterpillar, Samson had said, breaking his silence. Kitty and Mia gave him blank stares.It’s a moth, he explained.You’ve caught a stupid ugly moth.He then turned to me with a mischievous grin.We should name him Peter, he’d said, making me laugh. The three of them had spent their entire trip that summer trying to cheer me up post-breakup.
I looked at Kitty. “Yeah, I think it is.”
She nodded, her eyelashes fluttering as tears raced down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she said, pressing a hand over her mouth.
The broken mug in my hands anchored me in place. All I could hear was Samson’s voice sayingstupid ugly moth, and the memory of thatfuzzy black caterpillar made it hard for me to see Kitty standing right in front of me.
Before I could find something to say, Kitty fled, and I heard the bathroom door slam shut.
Mia slid into the kitchen seconds later. “What happened?”
I held up the mug, hoping she’d understand.
She nodded, then darted to the bathroom. I set the mug on top of the fridge, where it would hopefully be forgotten, and followed her down the hall. Mia had her ear pressed to the bathroom door, her brows knit in concentration.
“Should I talk to her?” My hands were slick with sweat. What would I even say?
Mia ignored me. She knocked two, then three times on the door.
“What are you—”
Three sharp knocks sounded from the other side, and Mia sank to the floor, crossing her legs beneath her. “Three knocks means she needs to be alone,” Mia explained. “Two means she wants to talk.”
“Oh.” I glanced at the door. How often did this happen for them to have a system in place?
“Grief support group thing,” Mia said. “She’ll be okay. She just needs a few minutes.”
Grief support group?Beth hadn’t told me about this. Was I supposed to be taking them to one down here? Was I supposed to know these “things” they taught at grief support groups? Our mother didn’t believe in therapy, so when Dad died, we were left to deal with things on our own.
“You don’t have to stand there, you know.”
I took in Mia’s oversized tie-dyed hoodie, the droopy topknot of her hair, her serious eyes. How had she grown up so fast? How could this be the same person I’d once potty trained by bribing her with Skittles?
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do.” I returned to the kitchen, my hands shaking as I poured coffee into a different mug—one that was part of a set, whole and unbroken, indistinguishable from the rest.
