There was a long pause over the phone, one that unsettled me further. “We’ll talk more about it later,” she ultimately said. “Did you have fun with your friends?”
I didn’t want to shift off the topic, though. I wanted to ask her not to keep it from me again. I wanted to tell her I’d been so worried when I’d gotten home and hadn’t seen her car in the driveway. But telling her my concerns, my worries, and my fears wouldn’t do any good. It’d only put more pressure on her shoulders. “Yes.”
“Good.” She made a soft noise, sounding like she was stretching. “I should start getting ready for work. See you when I get home.”
I hung up first, feeling upset, and then feeling guilty for being upset. Mom thought it was okay for Penn to watch the kids, so why did I have such a hard time with it?I should’ve been grateful they hadn’t interrupted my night of fun—so why did I feel soguilty?
I sucked in a hard breath, pulling my phone from my pocket. My coffee was almost done, but I shot off a quick text.
Text me when you wake up :)
And then I shoved my phone back into my pocket. No more thinking about anything. Not the kids, not Mom, and definitely not Jamie. Not until after coffee, when my thoughts would be less jumbled.
“You totally disappeared last night,” Nellie said as she curled her legs up underneath her on the couch, propping her elbow on the back of it and watching me. “I thought you were just taking a break, and then I get a text from Jamie that you bailed.Bailed. You should’ve come gotten me! I would’ve gone with you guys!”
“Please, you were having the time of your life, dancing with your little leather-wearing bad boy.” I raised an eyebrow at her. “You wouldn’t have left with us.”
A sheepish smile pinched at her lips. “I might’ve.” But we both knew the truth.
Nellie texted me back a little before nine and came over a little after eleven, with a pack of donut holes tucked under her arm. The kids had finished most of their chores—Junie was just waiting for the last load of laundry tofinish in the dryer—so I let them go play outside in the backyard with a bowl full of donut holes. Penn was supervising, but I had one of the nearby windows open to listen in.
“Why didn’t you want Jamie to come along this morning?” Nellie asked. “Did something happen last night?”
“No, nothing happened.” I sat on the opposite end of the couch from her, rolling a powdered donut hole between my fingers. Penn had made blueberry pancakes for breakfast—which only Picky Eater Theo had a problem with, and plucked out all his blueberries—so I wasn’t hungry, but felt like I wanted to munch onsomething. “I just feel likewehaven’t had much time together lately. Alone.”
“No kidding. We need quality girl time.” She nudged me with her socked foot. “We should do a sleepover or something. Where we paint our nails and do face masks, and all the girly things that’d make Jamie cringe.”
A sleepover with Nellie, though, meant that Jamie would just be a room away. It had me nervous just thinking about it. “We do.”
Nellie glanced around the living room idly. The kids did pretty well with their chores this morning. Ivy had finished collecting the trash first, and when that was done, her next task had been to tidy up the living room, folding the blankets and wiping down the coffee table. After Theo had finished picking up his toys, he helped clean the bathrooms, taking all the knickknacks off the counter so I could wipeit down.
They’d donereallywell. Maybe I needed to scold them more often if it meant they’d listen.
That thought immediately soured.Bad parenting.
“Jamie said the kids were up when you got home last night.”
“He told you?”
“This morning.” Nellie quirked her lips to the side, and I wondered what word she was spelling in her head. The way her eyes bounced, I knew she was spelling one. “You’ve never really talked about how much you take on, you know. I’m a bad friend for only really noticingnow.”
“Hey.” I frowned, leaning forward. “You arenota bad friend. We joke about Bestie Telepathy, but you can’tactuallyread my mind, Nell.”
Her pinched expression hadn’t faded, the line between her brows firm. “Has this been going on since your dad passed? You taking care of everything?”
I couldn’t help it—a chuckle slipped past my lips. “It’s not as dramatic as you’re making it sound. During the school year, I just watched the kids for, like, three hours before Mom came home. Sometimes I’m in charge of dinner. It’s no big deal, Nellie.”
She didn’t immediately believe my flippant tone, eyes still scanning mine. “Is that why you didn’t apply to any other colleges? Because you can’t leave the kids alone in the fall?”
I let out a breath through my nose. Talking about college with Nellie was different than talking about it with Jamie. With Jamie, it felt like a battle that I needed to win. With Nellie, it felt like a war—a one-sided, internal war,and I was on the brink of waving a white flag and telling her everything.
I looked at my best friend straight on. Eleanor Brighton was beautiful, even after walking ten minutes in the mid-June heat. Her dark hair was smoothed back in a ponytail, and her T-shirt was perfectly oversized, tucked into the waistband of her white shorts. There was not a frizz of hair out of place, no stain on her shirt, and her socks were not mismatched. She didn’t quite get a full ride to Mullhound, but the scholarship was generous. Her future was bright.
In the four years I’d known her, Nellie had almost never talked about her older sister, Destelle. The resentment Nellie had for her, for leaving them all behind once she graduated high school, had been too great for her to want to even bring up Destelle. Recently, they’d worked through some things, but old wounds took time to heal.
If I left the kids behind to go to college, just as Destelle had, would they resent me just as Nellie had? Would they pull back, look at me differently?
If I stayed, wouldIresentthem?
