Dinner continued on awkwardly after that, with the strain still lingering in the air. Theo ended up only eating half of his chicken, but everyone else cleared their plates. Mom collected most of the dirty dishes and filled the sink with water, beginning to wash.
I came up behind her with the empty tray we’d used for the breadsticks. “I can do these, Mom.”
But she was unmovable. “You cooked. I’ve got it, Daisy.”
“How about you wash, and I dry?”
Mom gave in, making room at the counter for me to stand beside her. We worked in quiet for a long moment, the clattering of dishes in the sink the only sound. Once she’d scrub a plate clean, she’d pass it to me, and I silently wiped the hand towel over it.
I couldn’t figure out how to start talking to her. She used to be easy to talk to, before Dad died and I’d heard her crying in her room. Something then had changed fundamentally that I couldn’t look at her the same. I couldn’t look at her smile without wondering if it washiding something beneath. That was another reason I felt so bad that Theo slipped out of sight earlier today—now that was something she’d have to worry about, whether or not it could happen again. If her dependable daughter would screw up again.
“I shouldn’t have been firm with you in front of the kids,” Mom ended up saying first, as if reading the topic in my thoughts.
Something about the way she said it had me feeling weird.In front of the kids, like I wasn’t one of them. “It’s okay. It was dumb of me to lose track of Theo. It—it was a big mistake. It won’t happen again.”
“How has everything been with the kids in the afternoons, otherwise? Have they been listening?”
“Uh, yeah, for the most part. Theo’s sleep schedule has been a bit off, but I think we’re back to normal.” I wasn’t going to tell her that it was my fault that he hadn’t been sleeping through the night. Letting him crash after his ice cream on Friday had done more damage than I’d expected, and this whole weekend, he hadn’t fallen asleep until after one in the morning. “Ivy has another playdate on Friday. She wants it to be a sleepover, but I don’t know.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t really know the parents that well.”
Mom’s hands stilled in the dish water.
“I mean, we’ll see,” I went on, confused by her reaction. “Junie wants to meet up with her friends, too. You’d think they’d been out of school weeks by the way they’re acting, and not just a weekend.”
“You sound like a mother.”
The exact same words Jamie had used, and, like Jamie, Mom didn’t laugh when she said it. She didn’t sound even slightly amused. “I do not,” I objected immediately, taking the next dish from her. “I just… sound like me.”
After a beat, she began scrubbing the next dish, but slowly. “What about your friends?” she asked. “Have you seen them?”
I nodded. “I played pickleball with Nellie today.” Mom must’ve missed that part.
I waited patiently for her to finish scrubbing the plate, because she paused again. I wondered if this was how things had been with Dad, these quiet conversations that I’d never paid attention to, like the kids in the other room didn’t pay attention now. Maybe she missed him and was wishing she was having this talk with him instead of me. That thought made me swallow hard.
“Have you heard back from NYU yet?”
The plate I was drying nearly slipped from my fingers. “I was… I was waitlisted. Remember?”
“But you should hear back if they ultimately reject you, shouldn’t you?”
I blinked. “Y-Yeah. I mean, I think so.”
“Have you been checking your email? In case they accepted you?”
A panicked feeling slowly began to build behind my ribs. I had not been checking my email. “They hardly ever accept people off the waitlist.” But what if theyhademailed me already, rejecting me? What if they accepted me, and I only had a few days to respond, and I hadn’t?
What if I missed my chance?
It’s a little silly to hear you talk about NYU like you’ll go.
Penn came into the kitchen silently, coming up beside my mental freak-out. “Daisy, I can dry the dishes.”
“You want to?” I asked, trying not to seem too eager to rush to my computer. The panic of it made me dizzy. I shakily held a dry dish out to her. “Thanks, Penn.”
She took it wordlessly, stepping in beside Mom. The sinking feeling grew with every step up the stairs, and when I got into my room, I flipped the light on, shut the door, and stood with my back against it for a moment.
