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So, all that stuff I had to say about myself? About being perfectly… average? Yeah, that did not apply to my baby sister.
A late-in-life whoopsie-daisy, Wren was born when I was already thirteen years old.
I’d been infatuated with her from the day my parents brought her home. She’d been this chubby, inconsolable thing that spat up all the time and constantly needed to be changed, but you couldn’t peel me away from her.
All that stuff about new moms not being able to sleep? That wasn’t true in my house. Because I was the one rushing into Wren’s nursery to coo over her and change her and feed her while my mom got rest.
The first thing I did after school after dropping my backpack on the floor was pull her out of my mother’s arms.
When our parents passed tragically when I’d just turned twenty-six, I’d rushed right over to scoop up Wren, to mourn with her, then to talk the social workers into letting me raise her.
She’d been twelve.
And I’d become a stand-in mother figure for her.
She was my whole world.
And where I’d gotten average brown hair, hers was laced with streaks of spun gold, waving in just the right way, never going frizzy or flat. And where my eyes were just plain brown, hers had starbursts of gold. Her features all fit together perfectly, making her look absolutely gorgeous, but also approachable.
She, too, got our mother’s smile.
I liked it even better on her face than I did on my own.
Even if it had been a long, long time since I’d seen one truly light up her face.
She’d always had a killer body, too. Though, admittedly, she’d lost way too much weight over the past few years.
It was my goal to change that.
Which made it serendipitous that I’d just pulled a lasagna out of the oven.
We were going to go ahead and pretend that I didn’t think way too much about Salvatore as I prepared the traditional Italian fare.
“I know I should have called,” Wren said, kicking out of her flat strappy sandals.
“Are you kidding? You know you never have to call,” I told her, moving inside, letting her follow me into the kitchen. “I just made lasagne,” I told her. “So now you have to stay, or I am going to end up eating it all myself.”
When all else failed, guilt worked.
Did it feel good to use it? No. But if it got her to eat, that was what mattered.
It wasn’t that she was actively starving herself. But she’d just been… not herself. It was like she forgot to eat. Or had just lost her appetite in general.
I wanted to have twice-weekly dinner dates with her, but my schedule just wouldn’t allow it. And I was trying not to make a big deal out of my “summer job.” In fact, I went ahead and let Wren believe that I only had it so I could splurge on fun classroom supplies for the school year and because “I don’t like having that much downtime.”
Lies.
I mean, yes, I did sometimes work odd jobs in the summer to buy something big for my classroom. But I’d been teaching for years. Most of the bigger-ticket things were already bought.
And I loved downtime.
There was never enough time, in my humble opinion, to read books. Summer was usually my catch-up time, checking out endless books from the library that I’d had my eye on all year as they released, but just never had time to get to.
“Hey, what’s this?” Wren asked as I started to grab plates, even though I knew the lasagne really needed some time to set before we cut into it.
“What’s wh—“ I started as I turned, then felt my stomach drop when I saw her holding my sling in her hands.
I didn’t need it anymore.
