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Between this and what she did for me earlier with Lolly, I really do feel good now.
*
“Holy snowflakes!” I say as Rae bounds into the living room on Thursday afternoon. “Raedolph the red-nosed Raedeer!”
She titters and waves her painted nose in the air, and I hear Liv laugh from the bathroom.
“Looks good, right?” she calls.
“Looks awesome,” I call back. Then to Rae, “Ope, come here a second.” She steps up to where I’ve been messing with the cables behind their TV, and I inspect the tufty white fabric that’s separating from her brown long-sleeved shirt. “Your reindeer belly is coming unglued.”
She gasps worriedly. “Oh, no!”
“Hey, it’s totally fine. We’ll get it fixed. Let’s go see what’s in the kitchen.”
There’s nothing helpful in her craft shoebox on top of the fridge, though, just school glue. When Liv joins us, we tell her the problem and she inspects it, too, then says she can sew the belly to the shirt in no time.
As they go back down the hall, she asks me, “Did you figure out what’s wrong with the TV?”
I return to the living room and check the cables one more time. “Nothing looks weird. The best I can figure is that the thing is just dying. It’s old.”
“Yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me. I bought it used and cheap as could be when I was eighteen.”
“Well, let’s throw it out and we can put my TV in here instead of in a bedroom.”
Rae chimes in, “Yay! I like your TV!”
It was decided just yesterday that I’ll move in with them instead of the other way around. Rae’s thoughts on my carpet are cute, but neither of them had a real preference, and there are memories at my place that I wouldn’t mind leaving behind. Amanda and I lived there together, plus it’s where Liv and I got into our big argument. The process of changing addresses was something to consider, too—it’s easier to update my information than for Liv to update both hers and Rae’s.
She did like the idea of her sister no longer knowing where to find Rae, but when I started to insist on getting them out of this apartment, she reminded me of what she said Sunday: they feel safe with me.
“I’m just mentioning Kelle because she pops up sometimes,” she told me. “I promise that if we really felt like we should move down the hall, we’d say so.”
It took some smiles and kisses for her to convince me, but I believed her in the end. Liv-Andria McKellar is nothing if not careful.
I go ahead and unplug the TV. It’s been useless the last couple days, so it’s not going to be watchable tonight when movie time comes around. The girls are quickly ready to leave for the Christmas program, so I take it with us and set it by the dumpster. Then we’re off.
“I’m scared,” Rae blurts out in the car.
“Scared?” Liv asks sweetly, turning in the passenger seat. “Why, babe?”
“There are going to be lots and lots andlotsof people.”
“Ooh, yeah. Well, Landon and I are going to be right where you can see us, okay? You can look right at us while you’re on the stage.”
I nod. “You sure can. You’re not scared ofus, are you?”
Liv adopts my teasing tone and reaches into the backseat. “She’s scared of our tickles!”
Rae giggles squeakily. “Annie!I’m going to tickle you back when we get there!”
By the time we get to the school, Rae has been distracted from her nerves. Even when Liv and I drop her off at her classroom, she lets us go with nothing more than a tight hug.
We’re early, but not quite early enough to get perfect seats. We end up in two outside spots on a middle-ish row; we agree that if Rae’s place on stage turns out to be across the room from us, we’ll just go over and stand instead of sit.
During our wait for the program to start, I spot and am spotted by a few of the dads I met at the dance. We shake hands again and I introduce them to Liv, and we make warm small talk about our girls. A couple of dads mention the party invitations Rae took to her class yesterday, and they say their daughters will definitely be there, which is awesome. Bill and Shannon come say hi, too, and happily meet Liv before they go sit down.
Once she and I are alone again, we talk for a minute about Lolly. My visits with her have been strange these last few days, because even though I’m not as heavy as before I poured my heart out to her,she’sworsening. More and more of her words are jumbled and don’t make sense, she’s been needing real help with the minute details of her day, and to top it all off, she still looks exhausted as hell. I’ve tried to talk to her caregivers about everything, but they keep saying there’s nothing unusual about her situation.
