I nodded. “Sure. It’s fine.” Even though Warren would be home as well, I had the feeling he would disappear with his book at the first available opportunity. She lingered on the porch for a moment, twisting her hands together. In the silence that followed, I was aware of just how much I wished things were different. I wanted to be able to talk to her, and tell her how afraid I was of what was going to happen, and have her tell me everything was going to be all right. But the way we’d always behaved stopped me, and all I could see were the barriers and walls I’d put up between me and my mother—casually, unthinkingly, not realizing that at some point I might want to take them down.
“Ready to hit the road?” My dad joined my mother on the porch, looking more like the version of himself that I had grown up with. He was wearing a blazer and a tie, and I tried not to see how big his clothes were on him, how he seemed to be disappearing in them. As they waved good-bye to me, my mother calling out last-minute instructions while I nodded, I realized that as they walked to the car in the slowly falling darkness, they could have been just any couple heading for a dinner out. They could have been just my parents, both of them healthy and whole, the way I’d always known them, and the way I had stupidly always assumed they’d stay.
Two hours later, I stuck my head into Gelsey’s room. “You guys okay?” I asked. I expected to see a typical slumber party unfolding—snacks (God knows we had enough popcorn), magazines, makeup, maybe a stolen trashy novel. But instead, Nora was sitting on the carpet, playing a game on her phone while Gelsey, on her bed, paged through a ballerina biography.
“We’re fine,” Gelsey said. Nora just gave me a nod without looking up from her phone.
“Okay,” I said. I looked at the scene for a moment longer before backing out into the hallway. “So… just call if you need something.”
“Sure,” Gelsey said. I closed the door and stood outside it for a moment, wondering if they’d just been quiet because I was there, waiting for the laughter and shrieking of a normal sleepover. But there was nothing but silence.
Without even thinking through what I was doing, I retrieved my cell from my bedroom and scrolled through my contacts until I found Lucy’s number, and pressed it before I could change my mind. She answered on the second ring.
“Hi, Taylor,” she said, her voice slightly wary. “What’s up?”
“Sorry to bother you,” I said as I walked down the hallway toward the kitchen. I pulled open the fridge door and saw that we had—in addition to a truly absurd number of bottles of chilled ketchup—cookie dough and Sprite. Perfect. “It’s just that my sister and a friend are having a sleepover.”
“Okay,” Lucy said, stretching out the word. “And?”
I thought back to what I had seen in Gelsey’s room, how sedate and utterly free from makeovers it had been. “And they’re doing it wrong.”
There was a pause. “How wrong?”
“They’re not talking. My sister’s reading and her friend is playing a video game.”
There was another pause. “That’s not good.”
“I know,” I said. “Clearly they don’t know what they’re doing. And I was just thinking back to our sleepovers….” I didn’t have to finish the sentence; I had a feeling Lucy would understand. Our slumber parties had been epic, and whenever I’d had sleepovers with friends back in Connecticut, I always found them wanting in comparison. I shifted the phone to my other ear and waited.
When Lucy came back on the line, her voice was brisk and businesslike, as though we’d had a previous arrangement all along. “What do you need me to bring? I’m not sure what kind of snacks we have here.”
I felt myself smile as I pulled open the kitchen cabinets. “We have more popcorn and chocolate than anyone could possibly want,” I said. “But maybe if you have any candy or chips?”
“Done and done,” she said. “Cookie dough?”
“Covered,” I assured her.
“Good,” she said. “All right. I’ll see you in ten.”
After we hung up, I excavated my makeup case from where it had been gathering dust on my dresser, since I hadn’t felt much need to wear any so far this summer. I had been expecting Lucy to drive or bike over, so it came as a shock when, not even ten minutes later, I got a text from her that read Am here on dock need hlp w stuff.
I hurried out through the screened-in porch and down the steps to the hill that led to the dock. Even though it was past eight, there was still some light left—it was one of those long summer twilights that seem to go on forever, the light somehow tinged with blue. I could see Lucy climbing up on the dock and hauling a one-person kayak up with her.
“Hey,” I called as I stepped barefoot onto the dock. “I thought you’d be biking.”
“This is way faster,” she said. She dropped two overstuffed canvas tote bags on the dock and dragged the kayak over to the grass, the paddle resting inside it. “Plus, no traffic this way.”
“Were you able to see?” I asked, as I hoisted one of the bags over my shoulder. Lucy lifted up a flashlight from the kayak and turned the beam on and off once. “Gotcha,” I said.