Page 15

“Tell me what you dreamed, Wren?” Poppy had turned and was facing her sister.

“No. I don’t have to, do I, Daddy?”

“No.”

Ivy was building a tower out of toast until it toppled over, and Poppy told her she wasn’t eating food that’d been on the floor. I trashed the fallen tower and popped more bread in the toaster.

I needed a plate, but I’d have had to move past Sinclair, so I decided on cereal, as there was a clean bowl in the dishwasher. Even the toast in the garbage would have been preferable to leaning close to him. But he moved slightly as I went behind him, and I brushed against his arm.

“Oh gods,” we said in unison. Without thinking, I grabbed him around the waist and memories of last night filtered into my head before I let go and darted to the right.

Poppy paused from layering peanut butter and jam, jam and peanut butter, and more peanut butter to her toast. “Do you like it here?”

Oh boy, that was a loaded question. “I do. It’s the best job I’ve ever had.”

“Damn, I’ve ruined this.” Sinclair wrapped a towel around the pan handle and raced outside, flinging the frying pan on the grass.

He wasn’t running from the ruined breakfast but from me. It took a runner to recognize another.

The girls clambered onto their chairs and kneeled on the table. “Is that Daddy’s favorite pan?” Ivy asked.

“It might be.” I picked them up one at a time and got them off the table, noting they had PB&J on their knees. “You were asking me something, Poppy.” I grabbed a cloth and wiped up the mess while trying not to think about their father outside.

The sisters shared a glance, and Ivy piped up. “We had a meet⁠—”

Poppy must have kicked her sister because Ivy jolted and yelled that Poppy was a meanie.

I wasn’t going to pry about a possible meeting, but took another mouthful of cereal. Sinclair hadn’t returned, and Wren asked if we should give the frying pan a funeral.

Ivy stuck her leg out and brushed it on mine. “You’re cold, River.”

“And everyone in your family has furnace hands.”

They asked what a furnace was, and I launched into an explanation with the help from my phone.

“Oh.” They nodded, and Ivy added, “That’s because we’re—” She stopped and her eyes grew wide. “Toasty.”

“No, cozy,” Poppy corrected her.

I herded the girls upstairs to brush their teeth. Their father wasn’t in the house, though when we got in the car, he popped his head in and apologized for upsetting them earlier. The girls’ expressions were blank, and when he explained, they shrugged and said they’d buy him a new frying pan for Christmas.

“But you’ll have to pay for it,” Poppy told him.

The three were subdued on the way to school. Most mornings they had me put on their favorite playlist and we sang loudly and off-key. I kept glancing at them in the rearview mirror as they whispered to one another. I caught bits of the conversation including, “We have to do…” and “We can’t let him …”

Perhaps they were planning a shopping trip to a kitchen equipment shop.

But at home, as I was stripping the sheets off their beds, I found a large piece of cardboard with two blank columns. It was titled River and the columns were yes and no. Hmmm, yes we like him or no we don’t? Yes, we scare River by pretending to be ghosts? Or yes, River is a meanie and then a detailed list of my transgressions?

I put it back and didn’t puzzle over it. Instead, I stared at the workshop between tasks because my boss was either working nonstop or he was hiding from me. We had to discuss what had happened, even if it was just to clarify that it was a slip-up, it didn’t mean anything, and it’d never happen again.

When the girls and I walked into the house after school, they were bubbly and discussing a class project. But as they were eating their snacks, Poppy put a hand over her mouth. Oh, here it comes, I said to myself. Another trick, another scheme, but I was enjoying them and thought, Bring it on!

“We forgot.”

I was mentally grabbing the keys and driving them back to school to pick up something important when Ivy, who was trying to keep a straight face, kept holding up her napkin and sniggering behind it. Did she think I couldn’t hear her?

“It’s Friday.”