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“I can honestly say I didn’t notice.”
I dipped down into the water, then settled my arms on the hot concrete when I came back up for air. Tansy was still scrolling.
She smiled—a soft, sappy smile that I didn’t usually see on my sister’s face.
“What?”
“The black-and-white tiles. They look like my quilt from Mom.”
That was why I’d picked them. But the admission didn’t want to come out. I didn’t want my little sister to know I’d chosen something that felt so personal.
“You still have that?” I asked.
She nodded. “It’s in the linen closet in the hallway. Not much use for a thick blanket like that in Florida.” Her eyes darted up to mine and held them. “No pictures of your project manager in here.”
I grunted.
One of the twins swam past me, and I tried to grab whoever kicked at me under the water. Felicia popped up from beneath the surface with a laugh.
Tansy started typing.
“What are you doing?”
“Asking her why she hasn’t sent one.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Yeah right.”
Tansy hit the screen with a bit too much vigor, then smiled.
“You did not.”
I hauled myself out of the pool and snatched the phone from her hand.
Me:How come there aren’t any pictures of you in these updates?
“Tansy!” I barked. “What the hell?”
Ford giggled.
“What? It’s a simple question. If I told her you watch your phone obsessively for her texts every day and I’ve caught you looking for flights no less than five times in the last three weeks,thatwould be inappropriate.”
Irritation clawed at my insides, but because the kids were out there, I decided to go easy on my sister. I ripped a towel off the stack on the ground and wrapped it around my waist.
There was no unsending the text, and the longer it went without a response—through a dinner in which I did nothing but glare at my beaming little sister, the fucking traitor—the worse it got.
It reminded me of how the silence between us had stretched and grown and multiplied after Charlotte walked in on me in the bathroom.
I didn’t want to acknowledge that, at the base of it, I was embarrassed.
My sister had the balls to send Charlotte something that I’d been thinking for weeks.
I hadn’t seen Charlotte’s face since I left, and every single time I opened one of her texts, I found myself wondering if I’d finally get a glimpse of her.
Tansy put the kids to bed, and I settled onto the couch with a beer, staring intently at my phone.
“Fuck,” I muttered. I ran a weary hand over my face. Anything would be a welcome distraction, and I flipped on the TV. As I scrolled through the guide, only one fucking show caught my attention, and I was cursing my weakness to high heaven as I punched the button to change the channel.
There was an old doll on a stand and two very serious people on either side of it.
