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Turning, she didn’t give Nathan a final goodbye. “Have a good night, Mrs. Rondeau.”
“You too, hun.”
And then she was gone.
fourteen
tully
Tully’s stomach growled the second she got into her car.
That roast had smelled heavenly, and as tempting as the offer of dinner was, the impending awkwardness of eating around a table with her fake boyfriend’s family made it less appetizing.
She was indebted to him already for doing all of this for her, and intruding into his home and eating with his family as his tutor and fake girlfriend was crossing a line. Maybe he didn’t think of it that way, but she did.
Luckily, they didn’t know the fake girlfriend part so at least her refusal wasn’t too strange.
Hopefully he didn’t see right through her lie about dinner—riddled with too much detail.
The drive home was quiet, aside from soft droning of the radio. She pulled in the driveway just as the sun was closing in on the horizon, sinking the early autumn skies into a deep gold. If she weren’t so hungry, she might have sat out there a while longer and taken it in. Pretty soon the days would get shorter and she’d miss these.
She sighed and walked towards the house. The front door was already unlocked, and unlike Nathan’s house, there wasn’t some fresh aroma of cooked meat. There was a TV playing though, in the living room up the hallway. She looked in to see her parents side by side on the couch, with Joliet sitting on the ground in front of their mother.
Joliet noticed her first, and craned her neck to look. Their mother, Rose, weaved Joliet’s hair into neat plaits—a tradition the pair had built over the years.
Always seeing Joliet’s hair in perfect golden braids had been what made Tully chop her hair to her chin at twelve—she’d only had braids a few times in her life, none done by her mother.
She appeared unfazed, bored even at seeing Tully there.
The movement of Joliet’s head is what drew Rose’s attention away from the TV to her other daughter—she also looked unfazed, her hands still moving expertly.
“Where are you going?” Rose asked.
Tully frowned, her hand tightening around the strap of her bag. “I just barely got home.”
Rose blinked. “You didn’t come home right after school?”
“No,” she paused, looked at Joliet, then added, “I was at my boyfriend’s house.”
Joliet’s eyes narrowed, and her back straightened, but she said nothing.
“That’s nice.” Her mother turned back to the TV, her interest lost in the conversation and her daughter.
And that was the end of that.
It hadn’t always been like this. At one point, her parents focused solely on Tully because they thought something was wrong with her. For years, they did all they could to get her to smile at them, or hold still, or show an interest in things they liked. And she just…couldn’t.
Joliet saw, so Joliet did the exact opposite. She had been quite keen for a five-year-old; realizing what it took to get people to like her better. And since she was easier, that’s exactly what happened.
Their parents’ focus shifted, and Tully became the weird child who was too much to handle while Joliet became the perfect child who never did anything wrong.
And since it worked so well for Joliet back then, she just kept it going everywhere else. Doing her best to make sure Tully knew exactly where she stood and should always stay.
At first, Tully working so hard for her grades was an attempt to get them to pay more attention to her, but her parents—both college dropouts—didn’t think it was that important. Instead, studying became her solace.
By now, Tully knew how to fake a smile, which she gave cockily to Joliet, then continued past the living room to the kitchen.
Behind her, she heard her mother say, “Now look at me, angel.” A pause, and in Tully’s mind she saw Joliet turning to look at her mother with a grin on her face. Rose’s hand would come up and fiddle with the long braids, grinning at her work and her youngest daughter—she knew this scene by heart now. “Oh, look at you, Joliet. As beautiful as ever.”
