*
It’s later that night; Josh is long gone. Kitty and our dad are asleep. We are in the kitchen. Margot is at the table on her computer; I am sitting next to her, rolling cookie dough into balls and dropping them in cinnamon and sugar. Snickerdoodles to get back in Kitty’s good graces. Earlier, when I went in to say good night, Kitty rolled over and wouldn’t speak to me because she’s still convinced I’m going to try to cut her out of the Paris trip. My plan is to put the snickerdoodles on a plate right next to her pillow so she wakes up to the smell of fresh-baked cookies.
Margot’s being extra quiet, and then, out of nowhere, she looks up from her computer and says, “I broke up with Josh tonight. After dinner.”
My cookie-dough ball falls out of my fingers and into the sugar bowl.
“I mean, it was time,” she says. Her eyes aren’t red-rimmed; she hasn’t been crying, I don’t think. Her voice is calm and even. Anyone looking at her would think she was fine. Because Margot is always fine, even when she’s not.
“I don’t see why you had to break up,” I say. “Just ’cause you’re going to college doesn’t mean you have to break up.”
“Lara Jean, I’m going to Scotland, not UVA. Saint Andrews is nearly four thousand miles away.” She pushes up her glasses. “What would be the point?”
I can’t even believe she would say that. “The point is, it’s Josh. Josh who loves you more than any boy has ever loved a girl!”
Margot rolls her eyes at this. She thinks I’m being dramatic, but I’m not. It’s true—that’s how much Josh loves Margot. He would never so much as look at another girl.
Suddenly she says, “Do you know what Mommy told me once?”
“What?” For a moment I forget all about Josh. Because no matter what I am doing in life, if Margot and I are in the middle of an argument, if I am about to get hit by a car, I will always stop and listen to a story about Mommy. Any detail, any remembrance that Margot has, I want to have it too. I’m better off than Kitty, though. Kitty doesn’t have one memory of Mommy that we haven’t given her. We’ve told her so many stories so many times that they’re hers now. “Remember that time . . . ,” she’ll say. And then she’ll tell the story like she was there and not just a little baby.
“She told me to try not to go to college with a boyfriend. She said she didn’t want me to be the girl crying on the phone with her boyfriend and saying no to things instead of yes.”
Scotland is Margot’s yes, I guess. Absently, I scoop up a mound of cookie dough and pop it in my mouth.
“You shouldn’t eat raw cookie dough,” Margot says.
I ignore her. “Josh would never hold you back from anything. He’s not like that. Remember how when you decided to run for student-body president, he was your campaign manager? He’s your biggest fan!”
At this, the corners of Margot’s mouth turn down, and I get up and fling my arms around her neck. She leans her head back and smiles up at me. “I’m okay,” she says, but she isn’t, I know she isn’t.
“It’s not too late, you know. You can go over there right now and tell him you changed your mind.”
Margot shakes her head. “It’s done, Lara Jean.” I release her and she closes her laptop. “When will the first batch be ready? I’m hungry.”
I look at the magnetic egg timer on the fridge. “Four more minutes.” I sit back down and say, “I don’t care what you say, Margot. You guys aren’t done. You love him too much.”
She shakes her head. “Lara Jean,” she begins, in her patient Margot voice, like I am a child and she is a wise old woman of forty-two.
I wave a spoonful of cookie dough under Margot’s nose, and she hesitates and then opens her mouth. I feed it to her like a baby. “Wait and see, you and Josh will be back together in a day, maybe two.” But even as I’m saying it, I know it’s not true. Margot’s not the kind of girl to break up and get back together on a whim; once she’s decided something, that’s it. There’s no waffling, no regrets. It’s like she said: when she’s done, she’s just done.
I wish (and this is a thought I’ve had many, many times, too many times to count) I was more like Margot. Because sometimes it feels like I’ll never be done.
Later, after I’ve washed the dishes and plated the cookies and set them on Kitty’s pillow, I go to my room. I don’t turn the light on. I go to my window. Josh’s light is still on.
2
THE NEXT MORNING, MARGOT IS making coffee and I am pouring cereal in bowls, and I say the thing I’ve been thinking all morning. “Just so you know, Daddy and Kitty are going to be really upset.” When Kitty and I were brushing our teeth just now, I was tempted to go ahead and spill the beans, but Kitty was still mad at me from yesterday, so I kept quiet. She didn’t even acknowledge my cookies, though I know she ate them because all that was left on the plate were crumbs.
Margot lets out a heavy sigh. “So I’m supposed to stay with Josh because of you and Daddy and Kitty?”
“No, I’m just telling you.”
“It’s not like he would come over here that much once I was gone, anyway.”
I frown. This didn’t occur to me, that Josh would stop coming over because Margot was gone. He was coming over long before they were ever a couple, so I don’t see why he should stop. “He might,” I say. “He really loves Kitty.”
She pushes the start button on the coffee machine. I’m watching her super carefully because Margot’s always been the one to make the coffee and I never have, and now that she’s leaving (only six more days), I’d better know how. With her back to me she says, “Maybe I won’t even mention it to them.”
“Um, I think they’ll figure it out when he’s not at the airport, Gogo.” Gogo is my nickname for Margot. As in go-go boots. “How many cups of water did you put in there? And how many spoons of coffee beans?”
“I’ll write it all down for you,” Margot assures me. “In the notebook.”
We keep a house notebook by the fridge. Margot’s idea, of course. It has all the important numbers and Daddy’s schedule and Kitty’s carpool. “Make sure you put in the number for the new dry cleaners,” I say.
“Already done.” Margot slices a banana for her cereal: each slice is perfectly thin. “And also, Josh wouldn’t have come to the airport with us anyway. You know how I feel about sad good-byes.” Margot makes a face, like Ugh, emotions.
I do know.
*
When Margot decided to go to college in Scotland, it felt like a betrayal. Even though I knew it was coming, because of course she was going to go to college somewhere far away. And of course she was going to go to college in Scotland and study anthropology, because she is Margot, the girl with the maps and the travel books and the plans. Of course she would leave us one day.
I’m still mad at her, just a little. Just a teeny-tiny bit. Obviously I know it’s not her fault. But she’s going so far away, and we always said we’d be the Song girls forever. Margot first, me in the middle, and my sister Kitty last. On her birth certificate she is Katherine; to us she is Kitty. Occasionally we call her Kitten, because that’s what I called her when she was born: she looked like a scrawny, hairless kitten.
We are the three Song girls. There used to be four. My mom, Eve Song. Evie to my dad, Mommy to us, Eve to everyone else. Song is, was, my mom’s last name. Our last name is Covey—Covey like lovey, not like cove. But the reason we are the Song girls and not the Covey girls is my mom used to say that she was a Song girl for life, and Margot said then we should be too. We all have Song for our middle name, and we look more Song than Covey anyway, more Korean than white. At least Margot and I do; Kitty looks most like Daddy: her hair is light brown like his. People say I look the most like Mommy, but I think Margot does, with her high cheekbones and dark eyes. It’s been almost six years now, and sometimes it feels like just yesterday she was here, and sometimes it feels like she never was, only in dreams.
She’d mopped the floors that morning; they were shiny and everything smelled like lemons and clean house. The phone was ringing in the kitchen, she came running in to answer it, and she slipped. She hit her head on the floor, and she was unconscious, but then she woke up and she was fine. That was her lucid interval. That’s what they call it. A little while later she said she had a headache, she went to lie down on the couch, and then she didn’t wake up.
Margot was the one who found her. She was twelve. She took care of everything: she called 911; she called Daddy; she told me to watch over Kitty, who was only three. I turned on the TV for Kitty in the playroom and I sat with her. That’s all I did. I don’t know what I would have done if Margot hadn’t been there. Even though Margot is only two years older than me, I look up to her more than anybody.
When other adults find out that my dad is a single father of three girls, they shake their heads in admiration, like How does he do it? How does he ever manage that all by himself? The answer is Margot. She’s been an organizer from the start, everything labeled and scheduled and arranged in neat, even rows.
Margot is a good girl, and I guess Kitty and I have followed her lead. I’ve never cheated or gotten drunk or smoked a cigarette or even had a boyfriend. We tease Daddy and say how lucky he is that we’re all so good, but the truth is, we’re the lucky ones. He’s a really good dad. And he tries hard. He doesn’t always understand us, but he tries, and that’s the important thing. We three Song girls have an unspoken pact: to make life as easy as possible for Daddy. But then again, maybe it’s not so unspoken, because how many times have I heard Margot say, “Shh, be quiet, Daddy’s taking a nap before he has to go back to the hospital,” or “Don’t bother Daddy with that; do it yourself”?
I’ve asked Margot what she thinks it would have been like if Mommy hadn’t died. Like would we spend more time with our Korean side of the family and not just on Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day? Or—
Margot doesn’t see the point in wondering. This is our life; there’s no use in asking what if. No one could ever give you the answers. I try, I really do, but it’s hard for me to accept this way of thinking. I’m always wondering about the what-ifs, about the road not taken.
*
Daddy and Kitty come downstairs at the same time. Margot pours Daddy a cup of coffee, black, and I pour milk in Kitty’s cereal bowl. I push it in front of her, and she turns her head away from me and gets a yogurt out of the fridge. She takes it into the living room to eat in front of the TV. So she’s still mad.
“I’m going to go to Costco later today, so you girls make a list for whatever you need,” Daddy asks, taking a big sip of coffee. “I think I’ll pick up some New York strips for dinner. We can grill out. Should I get one for Josh, too?”
My head whips in Margot’s direction. She opens her mouth and closes it. Then she says, “No, just get enough for the four of us, Daddy.”
I give her a reproving look, and she ignores me. I’ve never known Margot to chicken out before, but I suppose in matters of the heart, there’s no predicting how a person will or won’t behave.