“It sounds sad,” I say, reaching for her wineglass and taking a small sip after she nods permission at me. The liquid is cold and sharp, and tastes like lemon juice mixed with grapes. “Bleh,” I groan, handing it back to her.
She chuckles. “It grows on you,” she says, taking a big sip and putting the glass back on a coaster I made at camp when I was eight. “You’ll have to learn if you’re going to Paris. And the book is sad, but it’s nice to feel sad sometimes.”
“Did your therapist tell you to tell me that?”
“No,” she says, threading her fingers through my hair, “just an observation.”
She doesn’t really need to say more. We both know what she’s thinking. I snuggle in a little more and let her baby me for a few minutes. She smells like clean laundry and hand lotion. The steady scratch of her nails against my scalp makes me sleepy.
“Kids are exhausting,” I mutter, closing my eyes. She laughs silently, her stomach bouncing my head a little.
“Oh, speaking of kids, we’re having Paula and the boys over for a barbecue tomorrow.”
I pull the blanket off the side of the love seat and draw it over myself. I can’t tell them to cancel. Paula is Mom’s friend and they’re our literal neighbors. It would be weird if I objected to a casual barbecue.
“Okay.”
“I know something’s changed. That you and Luke aren’t as close. Was it your health? I know you asked us not to tell them details, and we’ve respected that, so is it something else? You know you can tell me.”
“Something else. He still doesn’t know about the heart stuff, and I don’t want him to. Yet.”
“Okay, honey, but I’m sure he’ll be understanding. You share the same history.”
“Maybe. Can we just not bring it up?”
“Of course.”
We fall quiet for a while as the yard darkens from purple to navy to black. Mom goes back to her book, the pages slicing through the quiet alongside the spring peeper frogs hiding back in the woods. When I fall into a light doze, Mom shakes me gently. “Get to bed,” she says.
I head inside, passing through the living room to say good night to my dad.
As I trek up the stairs, I feel the full weight of the busy week settling into my bones. I pause and take in the photos of Luke and me halfway up. We’re at camp, showing off our wimpy muscles in our swimsuits. We painted our scars bright red to show the kids teasing us we didn’t care what they said. Our scars were special; they meant we’d survived. I sigh. I want an easy path back to those kids, or at least to what’s between them. A fierce kind of protective love.
After I shower, I sit on the footstool in front of my vanity and brush out my hair, putting in the fancy leave-in conditioner Abbi got me when I got sick two years ago. There’s barely any left. The me in the mirror looks healthy enough. My skin is a little tanned from the days in the sun. As I go through my skin-care routine, I try to picture her older, at twenty, before our new heart arrives, then thirty, forty-five. I push fast-forward on her face, where I imagine I’d wrinkle and sag, and when I squint, I can see her—me but old, ancient, at least a hundred. She’s beautiful. Her gray hair wild, her thick glasses held on with a beaded chain made by some grandkid.
What would she say about how to livenow?
Chapter Nine
Luke
I try to get out of the barbecue at the Watkinses’ by telling Mom I’ve been called in to cover at the marina, but she isn’t buying it.
“I called Georgie ahead of time and double-checked they hadn’t put you on the schedule,” she says as she wrestles Adam into a button-up. I don’t know why she’s torturing them with nice shirts. It’s just the neighbors. I’m pretty sure Mrs.Watkins was there when Oliver was born. I remember her showing me how to hold him.
“I know you and Sera had a little falling-out, but you’re eighteen, honey. Learn to patch things up.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket for the fifth time in the last ten minutes. Izzy wants to hang out, and I’ve been avoiding her. It’s not that I’m not happy to see her, but with Sera back it’s just…confusing.
“I’d like you to come,” Mom says as she directs Adam towardthe front door and pries a Nerf gun out of Oliver’s hands. “Please. They’re like family.”
We let the unsaid thing sit between us. That with Dad out of the house we’ve been trying to rebuild whatfamilymeans, to varying degrees of success. I nod and stop Oliver from reaching for his Nerf gun again.
“Heyyy,” he says, pouting.
“There’s stuff to do over there,” I promise him. “Let’s go.”
I text Izzy that I have a family thing but that we can hang soon.
