“You tell me,” her sister replied. “I told him I wasn’t opening it until you got back and said whether it was a good idea or not.”
“Told who?” Vivian asked, taking the bag when Florence held it out to her.
Inside were half a dozen paper boxes from the automat: roast beef sandwiches dripping with gravy, baked apples with cream, ham and peas, baked beans, potato salad, and a slice of blueberry pie that was big enough for four people. Two bottles of soda water were nestled at the very bottom. Vivian unwrapped them all and laid them on the table, the puzzled expression never leaving her face until Florence pointed to the note scribbled on the bag in pencil.
I know you can take care of yourself.
But this time, how about I take care of dinner.
Leo
Vivian glanced at her sister. “I hope you’re not about to spout some nonsense about accepting gifts from men. Because I’m probably hungry enough to eat all of this myself.”
Florence scrunched up her face, then glanced at the food and shrugged. “Pass me a sandwich,” she said, pulling out a chair and joining Vivian at the table. “Tonight, I really can’t bring myself to care.”
They ate in silence, but somehow, the luxury of it cracked the ice that was usually frozen between them. They never went too hungry, but they never bought as much as they wanted just because something looked good. Having more than enough food spread on the table between them made them both relax in a way that Vivian hadn’t realized a single meal could do.
They smiled at each other as they passed the boxes back and forth and ate their fill.
A knot of guilt was forming in Vivian’s stomach by the end, though. She got to indulge when she went out, usually on someone else’s dime. Florence never had any of that. Even though Vivian told herself it was because Florence never allowed herself to go after it, the end result was that her life had fun and excitement and luxury. Her sister’s was always just bleak.
“Here,” she said at last. Trying to escape her uncomfortable thoughts, she slid the pie box across the table. “You deserve it. You’re the one who was stuck under Miss Ethel’s eye all day.”
“I don’t think I could, I’m so stuffed,” Florence said, though the last words were muffled by a giant yawn. “I just want to go curl up in bed. You eat it.”
“It’s too much for one person,” Vivian protested. She tried to push the box into Florence’s hands, but her sister shook her head, yawning again.
Which was how, three minutes later, they ended up curled on Florence’s bed, side by side, a blanket pulled over their laps while both of them nibbled at the plate of dessert balanced on Florence’s knees.
It should have felt strange and surprising to Vivian—they had never been the type of girls to whisper and share confidences in bed with each other. In the orphan home, they were in different dormitories because of the gap in their ages. And by the time they left, the friction between them was firmly established, Florence grimly following the plan laid out for her, Vivian eager to see what life would be like with no rules or walls hemming her in.
But something was tickling a memory in the back of her mind. Vivian frowned at her sister. “Have we ever done this before?” she asked.
Florence stilled, a fork halfway to her mouth. “You don’t remember?”
“Remember what?”
Her hand shaking a little, Florence set down her fork. Vivian was shocked to see tears along the edge of her sister’s lashes before she blinked them away.
“The first few years we were in the home, until you were about six,I’d save my dessert and come visit you every night after lights out. We’d eat it together, and I’d tell stories until you fell asleep.” Florence glanced at Vivian out of the corner of her eye before looking away again. “You usually wanted to hear about our mother.”
Vivian stared at her sister, her hands shaking. Shecouldremember now, just barely, just a vague sense of another warm body pressed against her under a skimpy blanket, of small, strong arms circling around her neck, of a girl’s voice whispering in her ear as she fell asleep. It was almost impossible to fit those memories into the picture she had of her sister, of the distance that had always been between them. How could she have forgotten?
“Why did you stop?” she asked. “Did you…” Another memory drifted at the edge of the first, of loneliness, a feeling of being left behind when those nightly visits stopped. She swallowed, and when she spoke, the words came out in a whisper. “Did I make you angry?”
“No, of course not!” Florence looked stricken. “You do remember, then?”
“Only a little, now that you mentioned it. I remember… I didn’t know why you stopped coming.” Vivian struggled to force a deep breath past the knot in her chest. She had always been convinced that she was a bother to Florence, a weight dragging her sister’s life down. Maybe she had been then, too. “Did you get in trouble with the nuns for breaking curfew?”
“No.” Florence shook her head. “They weren’t cruel, Vivian. You remember that, don’t you? And they knew family was important. I stopped because…” She looked down at her lap, where her fingers were twisted around each other anxiously. “Sometimes I would tell you stories about our mother. You didn’t remember her at all, you were so little when she died. But I remembered, and the stories helped me not to forget. But sometimes…” Florence’s cheeks were pink with emotion, and her hands were shaking. “Sometimes, instead of telling you about her, I’d tell you about how our father would learn where we wereand come for us. Or how, when we left the home, I’d marry someone rich and he’d help us find our family.” She smiled faintly, though her eyes were still wet. “You said once that I could get married, but you wanted to be in films. So I’d tell you stories about how you’d be a famous dancer in Hollywood one day.”
Vivian listened, frozen in place and barely able to feel herself breathing. She could hardly believe Florence had ever dared to imagine so much for them.
Florence’s smile had softened. “Maybe that’s why you ended up loving dancing so much. But…”
Her expression darkened, and her shoulders hunched a little, as if she wanted to protect herself from the memory. “Sister Agnes took me aside and said she was worried about you, about us. She said that if I wasn’t careful, you’d end up believing and wanting impossible things. And she explained, very clearly, what we could expect when we left the home. They’d make sure we were trained for a trade and could find work. But life would be hard. We’d be poor. We didn’t have any family to come for us. And we’d only have ourselves to depend on, because the odds of anyone wanting to marry…” She broke off, her voice shaking. “Anyway, my stories were going to do more harm than good. She meant well, and she was right. So I stopped.”
Vivian could feel tears pressing behind her eyes, though whether she wanted to cry for herself or for little Florence, taking on that burden at all of nine years old, she wasn’t sure. “She wasn’t right.”
