“You would swan into Walter’s and work for a total of five seconds before you said that had to go text someone for ‘business,’ but I know you were only playing Toad Crusher on your phone,” she told him. “Molly did everything and she had to constantly deal with Dad, too. Do you think he was nicer to her than he was to you? He mostly ignores you and me but he hates her! You’re a failure and I’m a waste of space, so we don’t count, but Molly was the workhorse who showed up and got punished for it.”
“Your father doesn’t hate any of you!” our mother objected. Then we went off on that tangent for a while and it took even longer for me to yank us back on track. By that time, Max’s deadline for when he’d have to leave had slid right past. We hadn’t even established if he would actually try to take over Walter’s, and if so, how we would wrest the business away from Dad. That guy had somehow gotten himself to the East Coast, according to the legal notices that my mom still got in the mailbox at our formerfamilyhome. There must have been casinos in that area, places where he hadn’t yet worn out his welcome.
By the time they all got up to go, we had established nothing except that Mom believed that Dad truly loved us (despite never being able to demonstrate that emotion). She had also admitted that their divorce wasn’t moving along at all. Neither was the sale of the house, and neither was the balance in her bank account. As fast as she and my sister were making money, they were spending it on utilities, food, and other essentials.Financially, it didn’t appear that things were quite the bed of roses that she and Morgan had expected.
But my sister seemed content. She’d been chatty and upbeat throughout our failed discussion, smiling and even laughing. As Mom followed Max out of the door, Morgan hung back. She stopped on the pathway to the drive and turned around to talk again.
“How’s everything?” she asked me.
I briefly considered lying and saying that I had never been happier in my whole life—but actually, that wasn’t a lie. I didn’t wake up singing, with birds tweeting cheerful tunes outside my window, and my hair already looking great. But I did wake up without a pit of worry in my stomach (or if I had one, it was only a small pit). I also woke with the awareness that I had someone on my side. That was new to me and it was the most comforting thing I’d ever felt.
“I’m pretty good,” I told her. “I’m better off than before.”
She nodded and I noticed that she wasn’t smiling anymore. In fact, she looked extremely serious. “I was really surprised when you moved out of the house like you did. I was shocked.”
“Why? Why would I have stayed?” I asked. “You were talking about leaving, too.”
“Mom and I were looking for a place big enough for all of us!” she scolded. “You could have explained that you and Shane were seeing each other, instead of keeping it a secret. You definitely could have told us that you were moving in with him.”
“We’re not seeing each other and I live here as his roommate, not his girlfriend or partner or whatever. That’s it.”
“Oh.” She pondered that for a moment. “Then why did you sneak off?”
“I didn’t. I decided that I needed to move on, just like everyone else was. You and mom were so excited to start fresh, and I wanted the same thing. So, after my graduation—”
“What?” She walked back to me and repeated herself. “What? Your graduation? What do you mean?”
“It’s the ceremony that occurs when you complete the required coursework for a degree,” I explained. I put my nose in the air, like Max’s girlfriend had done when she’d told me how rich she was. “I graduated. They had speakers and handed out diplomas. The same thing happened at the end of high school and I went to yours, but you didn’t go to mine back then, either.”
“I was really depressed,” she said quietly. “I was for a long time.”
I felt a familiar rage rise up in me at those words. “Right. So you hibernated and let life pass by without you, while other people supported you. But now, you’re feeling great and you went and bought new clothes and got a haircut with the money that Mom had hidden away from the rest of us.”
“That’s not fair!”
“No, it wasn’t fair that I went to that stupid restaurant every day while you stayed in bed!” I retorted.
“Do you think that I wanted to be that way? And no one made you go in so often!”
“What would have happened if I didn’t?” I asked her. By this point, we were both pretty loud.
“The same thing that happened when dad took off! Walter’s Café would have gone under even faster and we would all been a lot happier!”
The next-door neighbor, very next-door since I lived in a duplex, peeked out at that point. “Is everything all right, ladies?” he wondered.
He was a good guy and his side was quiet besides when his cats fought. “I’m sorry we were so loud,” I told him. “This is my sister and she’s leaving now.”
Morgan apologized too and then she did leave, without another word to me. Not that I wanted one! I had other things to do, anyway. Later today, I would pick up Shane when he came in from Indianapolis, and we were going from the airport over to meet some of the other lower-level Woodsmen coaches for dinner and drinks. I was looking forward to that, having never done anything like it before, except when my sister and I had gone out together in my futile attempt to attract a football player. That night had been a failure, since she had ended up drunk and had lost one of my shoes from the pair that she had been wearing (we’d probably left it in the parking lot as I’d shoved her into my car, since they hadn’t fit on her dumb little feet).
Tonight would be better—although at the moment, I wasn’t very happy. I went back inside and got one of Shane’s T-shirts because I was crying, just slightly, and he didn’t mind if I usedthem for tears or for wearing around, because he was generous like that. I wanted to talk to him about the outcome of the meeting (crappy) but he was busy with his own job and then he’d be driving through Indianapolis traffic and airport chaos, too, which I didn’t like for him. At least I would be the person behind the wheel once he got back here, a relief which I also didn’t relay. He didn’t need to know how much I worried.
It was the same thing for his parents. When they had said goodbye to him at the end of their visit, they had both been very upset. “Please watch over him,” his mom had whispered as she’d hugged me, her voice breaking, and I had nodded to let her know that I would. I hadn’t gotten the chance to have a private discussion with them about his future, like I had wanted, but I thought that was for the best. We didn’t need to sneak behind his back as if he was a child or someone incapable of managing himself. He wasn’t either of those things.
But his parents still worried, and so did I.
I had a while before I needed to be at the airport and I didn’t have any shifts today, so I decided to use some of the money I’d lately earned to go shopping. That was always frustrating and perplexing. Clothes were annoying because they were made for women who were about three inches shorter than I was (it would have been five if I had actually stood at six feet, which I liked to claim). They were also not made for someone quite as rounded as I was, a physical feature which persisted even with the increased exercise that I was engaged in. My curves were just turning more muscular, which I supposed was an improvement.
I was never sure about what would look nice on me and there was no one that I could have called or texted for help with that issue. My sister? No, because she wasn’t a friend and she didn’t know anything about clothes, either. Shane was always complimentary so it was hard to trust his opinion, and he wasn’t a shopper himself. I reviewed the list of people that I knew—Avonlea? After all, she was living with my brother and if they went through with the wedding, she’d be an in-law. But the two of us hadn’t parted on the best of terms when we’d had coffee. Actually, her last words had been, “I think it’s best that Max gives you and your family a lot of distance.” She had texted a few times since, but I didn’t put that down to friendship. She was probably trying to gather information in order to protect her fiancé.
