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May’s eyes could have cut glass. “Don’t.”
Allie sighed and fidgeted in her leather seat. It was as hard as a rock, as if no one had ever put their butt on it before. When she tried to sit up straight, her back hurt. When she slouched enough to be comfortable, she slid off the edge and onto the floor.
“Sit still.”
“Has Dad ever been to New York, do you think?”
Allie couldn’t imagine it. Their father was a creature of Wisconsin, traveling from home to work to as far afield as the cabin at the lake, Green Bay for a Packers game, and once, memorably, all the way to Minneapolis when they got tickets to a playoff game and went to the Mall of America.
“I don’t think Dad has ever been on a plane,” May said.
“Sure, he used to fly with that kid in high school on the next farm who had the plane. They would go to the air show in Oshkosh together.”
“I never heard that story.”
“Oh. He’s told me a couple times.”
May looked out the window. “You’re the one he tells stuff to. Not me.”
“That’s not true.”
It was, though. Allie didn’t know how it had happened. Somewhere along the way she’d just become the daughter Bill Fredericks talked to, the daughter he drove to the antique store on weekends, the daughter he helped out with Sal’s inventory and the renovations on an empty building downtown.
Maybe it was because she wasn’t actually his daughter. Maybe it was easier to talk to the kid you raised who didn’t belong to you than to the daughter who looked just like you.
“He doesn’t tell me anything personal,” she said in apology.
“Even if he’s been on crop planes, I’m pretty sure he’s never flown commercially.”
“This isn’t commercial, though.”
“Whatever.”
Allie had been dismissed. May was tired, nervous, and not in the mood for sisterly sharing.
Allie walked to the bank of snack machines by the bathrooms and used the change machine to turn twenty dollars into quarters, which she began methodically plugging into the slot. She wanted a candy bar and some chips, and it never hurt to get extra. Someone might be hungry. It was four-thirty, and she didn’t know when dinner would happen or what it might be.
It had been such a dogshit day. Probably it was her fault for talking to May all night instead of sleeping. She’d grabbed a few hours for a nap after Winston went to the office, but it was the kind of nap where she felt as though she was awake the whole time, hearing phantom buzzing from her phone, dreaming of incoming calls where she learned her father had been in a plane crash and her mom blamed her.
She woke up too late to do anything but throw her
hair into a bun and slap on one of her few remaining outfits before it was time to meet May and her agent for lunch.
When May had told her about the meeting on the phone last night—scheduled weeks earlier, and apparently giving May an ulcer—Allie volunteered immediately to tag along for moral support. But May’s agent, a busy man with heavy teal glasses’ frames and a tendency to look past May when he spoke to her, had clearly not been comfortable with Allie’s input or her questions, and he hated her outfit, a vintage wraparound apron dress in red flowered cotton that had a tomato linking arms with a bloody Mary glass on the pocket.
The lunch was all about what he wanted May to do, which was scrap her current story and focus on what was hot right now. Allie started to feel that if he said “the market” one more time, she would scream.
When the bill came, she’d snatched it nearly out of his hands and paid it, triumphant to have wrested this tiny bit of control from the man who was ruining her sister’s career.
To say this had not been May’s interpretation of the lunch, however, would be to understate the train wreck that followed.
I thought he was supposed to work for you, Allie had said as they left the restaurant, then May spent the next twenty minutes explaining that she didn’t understand how agents worked, or the children’s book market, or how difficult it was to get representation at all, much less someone as prestigious as her agent.
Running on fumes, Allie had gotten annoyed, which made May snippy, and then they yelled at each other until May’s eyes filled with tears she refused to shed. Then they sat on a rock in Central Park while May talked about how she didn’t want to do any of the things her agent had suggested and she was convinced he’d signed her by accident and didn’t like her art or her stories at all.
Allie squatted down and retrieved her snacks from the bottom of the machine. She used the top layer of her dress to carry them outside, where she presented Jean with a soda and his choice of junk food.
“You can wait inside with us if you want,” she offered.
