"Sadie Jo. I see the eggs."
She slides into her chair at the kitchen table the way she always does—without a sound, without being asked, like a kid who learned a long time ago how to move around a distracted parent.
Thirteen years old and she's already got the routine memorized—backpack on the chair, lunchbox on the counter, juice from the fridge, wait for Dad to stop swearing at the stove.
I scrape the eggs onto a plate. They're not burned. Close, but not burned.
"Wrenleigh!" I call down the hallway. "Breakfast."
Nothing.
"Wrenleigh. Food. Now."
The thud-drag of crutches on hardwood answers me before she does.
It's been three weeks since the four-wheeler accident, and my oldest daughter has turned the simple act of walking on crutches into a full-body expression of rage.
Every step sounds like a personal fuck you against the universe for putting her in a cast.
She swings into the kitchen, blonde hair hanging in her face, and drops into her chair hard enough to rattle the table.
The crutches clatter against the wall where she throws them.
"I hate those things."
"Good morning to you too."
"There's nothing good about it. It's six forty-five in the morning, my leg itches inside the cast and I can't scratch it, and homecoming is in two weeks and I'm going to have to wear this with my dress and I want todie."
"You're not going to die."
"I might. From the itching alone."
Sadie Jo takes a bite of toast and watches this exchange with the calm detachment of a girl who's been living with her sister's meltdowns for thirteen years.
She catches my eye and gives me a look that's so much older than thirteen it makes something in my chest ache.
I set plates down in front of both of them.
Eggs, toast, sliced apple for Sadie Jo because she won't eat a full breakfast no matter how many times I try.
A glass of milk for Wrenleigh that she'll complain about and then drink anyway.
"Eat," I say. "We leave in twenty."
"I could drive if someone would let me get my license already?—"
"Eat, Wrenleigh."
She stabs a forkful of eggs with more force than scrambled eggs have ever deserved and shoves it in her mouth.
Even furious, even in a cast, even at six forty-five in the morning with her hair in her face and fire in her blue eyes—she's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
She's also the spitting image of her mother, which is a knife I've learned to take without flinching. Most days.
Sadie Jo eats quietly beside her.
My dark-haired girl. My mirror.
