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“You’re ready early,” Sage said when she couldn’t put it aside any longer.
Thelma patted the only other barstool at the tiny peninsula in their kitchen. “Come tell me a story.” A cup of coffee sat there too, still steaming, as if Thelma had been spying through the blinds to know when Sage would arrive home.
Like that was hard. Sage did everything the same, every day. She loved and thrived on her routines—and that was exactly why she wanted to blow them all up and do everything the opposite of how she’d always done it.
She sighed as she sank onto the stool, and she took a half a minute to put sugar and cream in her coffee and stir it. Thelma said nothing, which was a feat of pure willpower, Sage knew. She’d been raising her sister for thirty years, and that fact alone had her opening her mouth.
“Ty Parker texted,” she said. “We’re…well, we’re not seeing each other. We’re not dating. I don’t even know if I want to date.”
“Him, or just in general?”
Sage could still feel the buzz in her fingertips from where she’d brushed his hair off his forehead last night. “I don’t know.” She lifted her mug to her lips and took a sip of the hot liquid that always seemed to soothe her.
“I need a change,” Sage said, and truer words couldn’t have been spoken. A flare of light, of life, filled her, and she looked over to her sister. “Yeah, I like Ty Parker, but I’m not sure he’s the change I need. But I need something.”
Thelma looked at her with worried eyes. They’d been through a lot together in the past year, and Sage had worked hard for her whole life to erase the look on her younger sister’s face. “Maybe we should look for a house,” she said.
The light within Sage grew, and she nodded. “Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.” She took another sip of her coffee. “I won’t be able to walk Gypsy on the beach in the morning if we move.”
“So you’ll find a group of grandmothers to go with,” Thelma teased, nudging Sage with her elbow. Sage smiled, but the gesture didn’t sit long on her face. Their eyes met, and Thelma added, “Sage, I’ll be okay on my own again. Really.”
Sage brought back the smile, and it felt very much like one her mother would’ve worn once-upon-a-time. “I know you will be, baby. I know that.” She brushed Thelma’s bangs to the side, but her sister turned away, her eyes dropping to her nearly empty coffee cup.
She got to her feet and went into the kitchen. “Should I make eggs for breakfast?”
Gypsy heaved himself up from where he’d been lying in the living room and came over, clearly understanding the word “eggs.”
“I think someone wants you to,” Sage said dryly. She let Thelma get away from the conversation about her abusive past by cracking eggs and scrambling them up for the three of them. But when she returned to the barstool with breakfast, Sage looked at her. Really looked.
“So we’ll both look for a place. I don’t want somewhere small. I want—I want—” She wasn’t sure what she wanted.
“Paint the picture, Sage,” Thelma said, which was an echo of what Sage used to say to her growing up. She’d dropped out of college to finish raising her siblings after her mother’s death, and Sage hadn’t had any idea what she was doing. Whenever one of them had a hard time talking, she’d simply tell them to paint her a picture.
She closed her eyes and saw her hobby farm in Texas. “I want chickens,” she said. “And a big yard for Gypsy to run around in, and of course, I’ll have to teach him not to chase or eat the chickens.” She smiled, because she could just see her big, black dog galloping around an acre of green grass.
“I want the quaintness of a well, but I don’t really want a well.”
“Too much work,” Thelma murmured, and Sage nodded. She wanted to open her eyes, but then the picture would disintegrate, and she wasn’t finished yet.
“I want a little barn, where I can do refurbishing projects, and I want a big long driveway, so I can hear someone’s tires crunching over the gravel before they get there. I don’t need a lot of animals like I had in Texas, because I don’t want to go back to Texas. I want to be able to get to the beach and go walking there, or sit with my friends, or hear the ocean. But I want…spaceto grow into who I’m supposed to be.”
Thelma’s hand curled around Sage’s, and she took a breath and opened her eyes. She picked up her fork and took a bite of her eggs. “Really good,” she told her sister.
“Garlic salt,” Thelma said back.
They smiled at the routine conversation, and Sage realized she didn’t want that to change. She just needed to have more room to find her own brand of happiness. “It seems like I’m going to have to talk to Ty again,” she said. “Professionally, of course.”
“Of course,” Thelma said with another ducked-head smile. “I don’t know how you talk to him at all.”
“What do you mean?” Sage knew some of the injustices Thelma had suffered, but not everything. She’d gotten her into a therapist for that, and her sister shared what she felt comfortable sharing.
“I don’t know how to talk to men,” Thelma said. A bitter laugh followed, and she shook her head. “Who’s forty years old, never been married before, and scared of the male species?”
Thelma was.
“Hey, honey, you have good reasons,” Sage said. “And you can live with me in the new house. It just needs to be bigger.”
Thelma shook her head. “No, Sage. I love you; heaven knows you’re the only reason I’m alive right now, but I don’t want—I don’tneed—to live with you past this.” She flashed Sage a watery smile that shook her lips. “I’ll find the right place for me. I know that now.”
