Page 46 of Every Almost

EARTH YEAR 1974 / COALITION CYCLE 484

? SHELBYVILLE, INDIANA, UNITED STATES?

In the years that followed,the Beckmans' house became the place where Charlie and Katie were found almost every day.

They didn’t officially live there. Their beds were still four houses down, and their names were still registered at the address of the Wickett house. But Helen's kitchen table had four place settings at every meal, and Frank's garage had a second lawn chair that he never bothered putting away because Charlie was always in it. Helen learned early that Katie would eat mac and cheese until she had way too much that she'd get sick if nobody stopped her, and that Charlie's eyes lit up at chicken piccata the way most children's eyes lit up at birthday cake. So Helen made mac and cheese on Tuesdays and chicken piccata on Fridays, and the girls showed up like clockwork, and nobody on the street thought anything of it.

They went to the hangar with Frank at least once a week. Sometimes to work on the Cub, Charlie with her hands in the Continental while Frank talked her through the finer points of fuel mixture, all while Katie sat on an overturned crate eating an apple or banana, or during the summer days, an ice cream cone from the Pilot's Lounge. Sometimes, they'd just go to the hangar to be near the plane. Frank did take them up in the Cub, eventually. One at a time.

Katie went first because she'd been begging for months. She came back down with her hair wild and eyes the size of dinner plates, with the oh so eloquent line of "it was pretty good, I guess." But she ended up talking about absolutely nothing else for the rest of the week.

Charlie's turn was quieter. She sat in the front seat and looked out through the greenhouse windshield, watching the farmland flatten into geometry below her. When they landed, she didn't say anything for a long time. But Frank didn't ask her to, either. He knew what the sky did to a person the first time they saw it from the right side.

A few months after their first flights in the Cub, Charlie decided one Saturday morning that she wanted to try her first cup of black coffee at the Beckman table.

"Why on Earth would you want to drink that awful stuff?" Helen had asked.

"What do you mean?" Frank exclaimed on the other side of the table. "It's the stuff made from the Gods!" He poked his elbow into Charlie's ribs. "Of course she wants a taste of the good juice." Frank winked at Charlie, then raised his own cup of black coffee to her in salute. Charlie smiled.

"Please, Mrs. Beckman? Just one cup?" Charlie said, putting on her most charming face. Helen looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

"Oh all right," she relented, standing up from the table, grabbing a mug from the cabinet, and pouring a cup of steaming black coffee for Charlie. "But don't say I didn't warn you."

"You did, we all heard it," Frank teased. She swatted his arm as she sidled up beside him. Charlie watched them, wondering how they made sharp words sound that warm.

She took the mug from Helen, sniffed the aroma steaming up from the liquid, and took one sip.

She made a face that Helen would describe for years afterward, and pushed the mug away.

"How in theheckdo you drink that stuff, Mr. Beckman?"

Frank looked offended. "Are you kidding? This stuff is primo luxury quality compared to what we had on 'the Big E!'"

"Then I feel very bad for 'the Big E,'" Charlie said, and Helen laughed so hard she had to set down the orange juice pitcher. Charlie swore off coffee for life. She would break that promise spectacularly in college, but that was a problem for future Charlie.

Katie wentthrough a friendship bracelet phase through that summer, right alongside all the girls her age at school. She brought her threads with her in her backpack wherever she went. She made them at Helen's kitchen table, her small fingers working the knots with serious intent and concentration. She made one for Helen, who wore it on her left wrist and called it her "finest piece of jewelry." She made one for Frank, who wore it just to the side of his watch without hesitation. And she made one for Charlie, and Charlie never, ever took it off.

Ed and Diane didn't seem to mind that their daughters spent most of their waking hours at a neighbor's home instead of theirown. In fact, it had helped immensely with their budget by not having to pay Mrs. Linden's babysitting fees any longer. They never asked where the girls were going or when they'd be back and they never came to the Beckman house for dinner, despite Helen's standing invitation.

This should have said something, and it did, but nobody in the Wickett house mentioned things, and the Beckmans were too kind to say it out loud.

Frank and Helen just kept the door open and the table set. They hoped, quietly, that their home would come to feel like the girls' home too, even if it wasn't where they laid their heads to sleep every night. But it was exactly what it became. Both girls were more at home with the Beckmans, at their yellow breakfast table, with the cookies and lemonade and lawn chairs and stories, than they ever did anywhere else.

It started with an errand.Helen needed buttermilk for a recipe, but Frank was in the garage working on a broken sprinkler from the back lawn, replacing one of the plastic gears with one made of more substance. When Katie and Charlie walked in and Charlie showed the two of them her freshly-minted, brand-new driver's license, Frank and Helen exchanged a look,thatlook of two people who have been married for an uncanny number of years and can hold an entire conversation with only their eyes.

"Hey, kiddo," Frank said, wiping his hands on a rag. "You want to run to Kroger for Helen? She needs buttermilk."

"Really?" Charlie asked, her pulse jumping at what might be coming if she asked the right question. "Should I go get my bike out of the garage?"

That was the right question.

"How about you take the Cutlass, instead?" Frank answered with a smirk, tossing her the keys. "Put that new piece of identification to good use."

Charlie caught the keys in her hand and beamed. "Sure thing, Mr. Beckman!" And Charlie spun on her heel, running back to the car at the end of the driveway.

Back in the garage, Frank looked at Katie, who was sitting on the step eating a cookie. "Why don't you go with her, boss? Give your sister a little company for her maiden voyage."

Katie was running for the passenger side of the Cutlass before Frank finished the sentence. She arrived next to the door, arms folded across her chest, chin lifted, planted. Immovable.