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“I like willow trees. My neighbor had a willow tree in her backyard and we used to play under its draping branches. The shade was nice, especially on a really hot day.”
Mary shifted on the sofa. “Willow trees always reminded me of umbrellas. Or fireworks. What do they remind you of, Rachel?”
“Pom-poms. Like the kind cheerleaders use.”
Mary arched her thin eyebrows, which had been noticeably filled in with brow pencil. “So you were a cheerleader?”
I rolled my eyes. “Fat chance. But I wanted to be. Never made the team. I’m about as coordinated as a moose walking in high heels.”
Mary laughed and returned to talking about trees. “Have you ever seen the giant sequoias in California?”
I shook my head. “I’ve never been outside of Pennsylvania.”
“My, are they big! And old. Thousands of years old.”
Mary’s eyes turned glassy and I wondered if I should change the subject. But she continued.
“Flies might live for days, tortoises and whales for hundreds of years, and trees, like the giant sequoias, for thousands of years. But eventually, they all die. No living thing, no animal or plant, can escape death.”
I listened as Mary poured some more tea. I wondered where she was going with this.
“So often in life we witness beauty too short-lived. Like the fringe tree. We wonder why the fringes can’t hang forever. Maybe what we should ask is why we didn’t enjoy the beauty while we had the chance.”
I mashed my lips together, considering whether to wade into the conversation. “It’s human nature, I think, to believe there’ll always be another day.”
“True,” Mary said. “But sometimes there isn’t. Sometimes wicked weather slams us unexpectedly and we’re caught off guard, standing in the drenching rain and rising water. Oh, I know everything in life has its own season – a time to be born and a time to die. But that doesn’t stop me from wishing the seasons could last longer.”
I sat my teacup on the cherry coffee table. Mary was making me uncomfortable. It was as if she was delivering a sermon meant just for me.
“Would you like more, dear?”
“No, thank you.”
“Rachel, I’m sorry. Sometimes I get carried away in poetic mumbo jumbo. I didn’t mean to be such a downer.”
I held up my hand. “No. You’re fine. Everything’s fine. It’s just that I thought you wanted me to clean.”
“Another day. But today I just wanted to talk, to get to know you a little. Can you come tomorrow to clean?”
“I’m sorry. I have another house to clean tomorrow.”
“Can you come the next day?”
I checked the calendar on my phone. “Yes, that will work.”
“Excellent. We can have lunch together.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
As soon as I said it, I wished I hadn’t. Mary looked like she was about to cry.
“Unless you want to, of course,” I quickly added.
“Well, you have to eat, right?”
I nodded. “But please don’t go to a lot of trouble.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble. It’ll be nice cooking for someone for a change. Do you like tilapia?”
“That’s fish, right? I don’t like fish.”
“Oh, you must try tilapia sometime,” Mary said. “It’s mild. Doesn’t have that strong fishy taste. What’s your favorite food?”
“That’s easy. Steak. But I rarely have it because it’s so expensive. I eat a lot of pasta and hamburgers.”
Mary nodded. “I like steak, too. What’s Piper’s favorite food?”
“Pizza and chicken nuggets.”
Mary smiled. “I’ll have to have you and Piper to dinner some evening. I’d like to meet her.”
I held up my hand. “That won’t be necessary.”
Mary’s shoulders sank and her smile flat-lined.
Darn, I did it again. Said something before thinking. “I mean, I don’t want you to go to any trouble.”
Mary shook her head. “It wouldn’t be any trouble. Besides, I’d enjoy the company. I hate eating alone.”
“Before Piper came along, I always ate alone. I miss it sometimes.” I looked away, thinking about how I divided my life into two eras, Before Piper and After Piper. I was struggling with the After part.
Mary poured some more tea. “Do you like to cook?”
I laughed. “No! If I could take a pill that had all the nutrients I needed to be healthy I would. I think I was the only kid in my seventh-grade cooking class that burnt the sticky buns. After that, the teacher made sure I was with a more skilled student. Before Piper, I pretty much ate whatever came out of a can or a box. But now I try to cook. For Piper. But she’s sneaky. She hates vegetables.”
Mary sipped her tea. “Was Piper excited for the first day of school?”
“She was scared,” I said. “Afraid she wouldn’t make any friends. But when I dropped her off at school, she met a girl in her class. They became fast friends.”
We talked some more about everything and nothing. I glanced at the antique cherry grandfather clock sitting in the corner. “I’d better go. I have some errands to run before Piper comes home.”
I stood.
“So you’ll come again on Friday, right?” Mary stood.
I nodded.
Mary walked me to the door. “Thank you, Rachel.”
I furrowed my brows. “For what?”
“For listening.”
As I drove away I glanced into my rearview mirror. Mary waved from the crack of the front door. I wondered what she was going to do the rest of the day. It made me sad to think she was all alone in that big old house. It was obvious she loved children and I wondered why she apparently had none.
Chapter 6 (#ulink_3ece85ec-4fd2-5c49-9981-2315fac7907e)
Mary
I watched as Rachel pulled away from the house. I really liked her. It sounded like the poor girl had had it even worse growing up than I did. I’ve always been a decent judge of character, and she seemed like a hard worker. It was a shame she’d had to drop out of college, though. But I admired her for giving up her dreams to take care of her little sister.
And it was nice that she and Claire had maintained their friendship. I wished June and I had. It bothered me that I allowed us to drift apart. We chatted off and on over the years, but it was never the same. Life sometimes unfolds in ways we’d rather it didn’t, and before you know it too much time has passed to go back to the ways things were.
I carried the tea set into the kitchen and washed the dishes. Then I sat down at the kitchen table and pulled out the paperwork I’d picked up at the hospital. I had to fill it out and return it in order to volunteer in the neonatal intensive care unit. I learned that when nurses are busy with other patients and parents cannot make it to the hospital, volunteers step in. They hold the babies, sing and coo to them, rock them and treat them as if they were their own. It sounded like a volunteer position I’d love. But first, I had to fill out the paperwork and undergo a thorough background check. I hoped it wouldn’t take long because, after seeing the teeny tiny babies in the NICU, I wanted to be able to help right away.
I knew James couldn’t have children. He’d told me that the day he proposed to me. We were sitting on the bench in front of the fringe tree.
“Mary,” he had said. “We’ve been going out for months and I know you don’t love me, but I can give you a comfortable life. I need a wife, someone who will be by my side in public and take care of this house and grounds. I promise I’ll be good to you. You can have anything you want. New furniture. New wardrobe. Anything.”
It wasn’t how I’d imagined being proposed to. It was more like a plea or an offer. While James and I were fond of one another, it was obvious neither of us was in love. He continued making his case for why getting married would be advantageous to both of us.
“I’m not home much and I work a lot, so I wouldn’t be in your way and you’d have your own space. As long as everything is taken care of, I’ll be happy.”
I looked into his eyes. “What about children? Can I have children?”
James sighed. “There’s something I have to tell you. When I was young, I got hit hard in the groin. I’m unable to father children.”
I gulped. “But you can, uh…?”
“Yes. But I can’t give you what you most want.”
“But we could adopt, right?”
James nodded. “If that’s what you want, of course.”
That night, as I lay in bed, I weighed my options. Father had been nice to me ever since I’d started dating James. James did have a beautiful house and I really believed he’d take care of me. I didn’t love him, but I doubted I’d ever love anyone as much as I loved Teddy. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. And if we adopted children, I could give them a chance at a better life.
Still, it saddened me to think I’d never lie in the arms of someone I loved. And I was desperate to feel a baby growing inside of me again. Night after night I tried to remember that first tickle, the first time I felt the baby’s little fist poke through my abdomen. I constantly wondered about my daughter. She was nearing her first birthday and I wondered if her parents would have a big party for her. Would they make her a special cake and shower her with presents?
I thought about James’s proposition for a few days before accepting. I went back and forth, weighing all my options. In the end, I thought that someone was better than no one and James was nice enough, so I settled. I shouldn’t have. Never in my wildest imagination could I have predicted what was to come. In a few short months, my life would never be the same.
Chapter 7 (#ulink_92502d91-fc2f-574f-9285-59e812262b59)
Rachel
“Can I have dippy eggs for dinner?” Piper had asked.
“Would you like bacon?”
She nodded.
I made Piper’s dinner and arranged the dippy eggs on the plate so they looked like two eyes and the bacon strips so they looked like a mouth, just like Miss Evelyn used to do for me and Claire. I smiled at the memory of Claire seeing the smiley face on her plate. She’d started to cry.
“What’s wrong, Claire,” Miss Evelyn had said. “Don’t you like your breakfast?”
Claire’s chin wiggled. “It’s too cute to eat.”
“Do you want me to change it so it doesn’t look like a smiley face?” Miss Evelyn asked.
Claire shook her head. “No, I just want to keep it. No one’s ever given me a smile on a plate before.”
That morning, Claire had refused to eat her eggs and bacon so I shared mine with her. It was the last time Miss Evelyn arranged Claire’s food in a smiley face. Instead, she bought Claire a smiley face pin. Claire never took it off, even when she went to bed. She still wears it today. Usually it’s pinned to her bra next to her heart.
“Piper! Your food is ready.”
Piper ran into the kitchen and sat down. She looked up at me and smiled. “Two eyes and a mouth!”
“Do you like it?”
She nodded. “Thanks, Rachel.”
I was glad Piper’s reaction wasn’t like Claire’s. Piper gobbled down her food and I took her to the park afterward. I sat on the bench while she swung.
“Look how high I can go!” Piper pumped her legs and went higher and higher.
“Be careful!” As soon as I yelled it she jumped off the swing midair. My heart flipped unexpectedly and I jumped up and ran over to her. “Are you okay?”
She stood up and grinned. “I think that’s my best jump yet!”
A part of me was angry she’d done something so dangerous and a part of me was relieved she wasn’t hurt. But she could’ve been. She could’ve broken a leg or badly twisted her ankle when she landed. What would I do then?
That night, after putting Piper to bed, I went through the photos on my phone. There was Claire and me at last year’s Halloween party at the bar. You were supposed to come as a drink. I came as champagne. I found a cheap sparkly dress at the thrift store and blew bubbles. Claire was a bloody Mary. She dressed as the Virgin Mary using a sheet and covered herself in fake blood. We had so much fun that night.
There were photos from the New Year’s Eve party and the long weekend at the beach with Claire. I looked so much younger in the photos, but it was only a few months ago, before I got The Call. I remember it as if it were an hour ago. I had just returned from shopping for a pair of sandals because the strap on mine broke while we were at the beach. Judy, a friend of Mom’s I didn’t know, called and told me Mom had passed away suddenly. An aneurysm. Poof! She was gone. Two passersby saw her slumped over in her car in the mall parking lot. When they didn’t get a response, they called 911. Turned out she’d been dead a couple of hours and missed picking up Piper at daycare. Judy was the emergency contact and the daycare called her.
A lot happened quickly. An autopsy confirmed the cause of death. I met Piper and moved in with her, making Mom’s bedroom my own. I would’ve preferred staying in the apartment I shared with Claire, but there wasn’t enough room. Besides, that would’ve meant uprooting Piper, and her world had already been turned upside down. She’d just lost her mother. I didn’t have the heart to take away the only home she knew, too.
But I hated being surrounded by things that were not my own. Even though I went through Mom’s stuff and donated what was in decent shape to charity and threw the rest out, the bedroom still didn’t feel like my own. Some nights, I felt like the pale pink walls were closing in on me. This was not the life I imagined, not the life I wanted.
When I learned about Piper, there was a part of me that was jealous. Piper had the kind of childhood I’d always longed for. I guess Piper was one last chance for Mom to get things right. Sometimes it amazed me that something so sweet could come out of something so damaged.
Judy said she met Mom at an AA meeting, where Judy was the leader. Mom started going after I left her. I had begged Mom to go to AA over the years, but she insisted she didn’t have a problem, that she could stop drinking anytime she wanted. Judy said it took me leaving to make Mom realize what a mess her life had become. If I had known that, I might’ve run away sooner. Believe me, I’d thought about it often.
I guess Mom met someone at AA and they hit it off. It was okay for a while. That’s when Mom got pregnant with Piper. But Jason loved the bottle more than he loved Piper and Mom. When he starting hitting the vodka, Judy said Mom kicked him out. Piper was just a baby and she doesn’t remember her dad. I’m glad Mom got the help she needed, and it sounds like she had finally pulled her life together. Piper and I see Judy once in a while. Still, sometimes I wonder what my life would’ve been like if Mom had gone to AA when I’d asked her to. She obviously loved Piper enough to stay sober. Why didn’t she love me?
I checked my newsfeed on Facebook. There were photos of my friends having a great time doing everything that I wanted to do but couldn’t. I clicked off Facebook and set my alarm instead. Maybe things would look better tomorrow. One thing I knew for sure, I was going to paint my bedroom. Something cheerful and bold. Something that was me. Maybe fuchsia or purple. Or a bright sunny yellow. I needed to make the space feel like my own, not as if I was borrowing it temporarily. I didn’t think there was anything temporary about it.
The next morning, I opened Piper’s backpack and stuffed in the questionnaire the teacher had sent home. She asked the parents… er, guardians… to answer questions, such as what’s your child’s favorite activity. I did the best I could, but I was still learning these things about Piper. Actually, answering the questions made me realize how little I did know about my half-sister. “Remember to give these to your teacher.”
