Page 157

But as I held her in the middle of the school parking lot, I couldn’t bring myself to care.

“And then he did a flip on the playground!”

“It was so cool!”

I stared at my daughters. When I’d asked them how their day went, I didn’t expect to be hearing about another child doing flips. Soon, they would be doing flips, and I had a feeling I would wind up taking one of them to the ER.

“What was this kid’s name again?” I asked.

They looked at each other. “I don’t know,” Agnes said. “He was just cool.”

“Flips are dangerous,” I said. “Don’t try them.”

“I wanna learn how to do them. Ms. Rudder was telling us how the library has a gymnastics class.”

“A gymnastics class?” I repeated. “Wow, they really do everything.”

“Can we go? We’d have so much fun!”

I pulled out my phone and checked the library’s website. The class started in one month, but it was a multi-month-long program, and I didn’t know how long we’d be here for.

“We can start it, but I don’t know if we can finish it.”

Agnes frowned. “Because we’re going back?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t want to!” Beatrice said with a huff. “I want to learn how to do a flip.”

“You might be able to,” I rushed to say. The last thing I wanted to do was start a fight. “You both are really fast learners. You might figure it out in your first session.”

Beatrice glared at me. Agnes joined in.

The sun had just set, and I could tell the girls were tired. They’d only been in school for two days, but it was taking a toll on them.

“It’s bath time,” I announced, hoping they would accept my distraction. “Then bed.”

“It’s early,” Agnes said.

“Is Jade coming over?”

I blinked at the question. Jade had been somewhat in control of her sleepwalking, so I hadn’t seen her beyond the couple of times she’d arrived at my door. I knew she had medication that mostly stopped it, unless she was in a period of high stress.

My heart clenched as I wondered if she would be sleepwalking tonight and if she would come to me again.

Even though she wasn’t angry with me, neither of us were in our right minds. I couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened in the closet, and I wondered if she did the same.

“She’s not planning to,” I said. “I’m more worried about you guys. School seems to be exhausting you two.”

“Kind of,” Agnes said.

“I’m not tired,” Beatrice argued, but she broke out into a yawn. I knew better than to call her out on it.

“Let’s try to sleep then,” I said. “But we’ll do a bath first.”

I expected Beatrice to fight me on it. Instead, she slowly stood and walked toward the bathroom.

“Can we play with our toys in the bath tonight?” Agnes asked.