"I haven't meant to let the house go," my mother said suddenly, startling me. "It's just been one more thing to deal with… I've had too much happening here." It can't be that easy, I thought, to get her to talk about this. To bring her closer to the one thing that I'd circled with her, deliberately avoiding, for months now. "I just—"
"It needs some new shingles," Caroline told her, speaking slowly, carefully. "I talked to the guy next door, Rudy? He's a carpenter. He walked through with me. It needs basic stuff, a stove, a screen door, and those steps fixed. Plus a coat of paint in and out wouldn't hurt."
"I don't know," my mother said, and I watched as Caroline put her hand on my mother's, their fingers intertwining, Caroline's purposefully, my mother's responding seemingly without thinking. This reaching out to my mom was another thing I'd been working up to, never quite getting the nerve, but she made it look simple. "It's just so much to think about."
"I know," my sister said, in that flat-honest way she had always been able to say anything. "But I love you, and I'll help you. Okay?"
My mother blinked, then blinked again. It was the closest I'd seen her come to crying in over a year.
"Caroline," I said, because I felt like I had to, someone had to.
"It's okay," she said to me, as if she was sure. No question. I envied her that, too. "It's all going to be okay."
Even though I scarfed down my linguini pesto in record time and ran the two blocks back to the library, it was one-twenty by the time I got back to work. Amanda, seated in her chair with her arms crossed over her chest, narrowed her eyes at me as I let myself behind the desk and, as I always did, battled around their thrones to reach my crummy little station in the back.
"Lunch ends at one," she said, enunciating each word carefully as if my tardiness was due to a basic lack of comprehension. Beside her, Bethany smiled, just barely, before lifting a hand to cover her mouth.
"I know, I'm sorry," I said. "It was unavoidable."
"Nothing is unavoidable," she said snippily before turning back to her computer monitor. I felt my face turn red, that deep burning kind of shame, as I sat down.
Then, about a year and half too late, it hit me. I was never going to be perfect. And what had all my efforts gotten me, really, in the end? A boyfriend who pushed me away the minute I cracked, making the mistake of being human. Great grades that would still never be good enough for girls who Knew Everything. A quiet, still life, free of any risks, and so many sleepless nights to spend within it, my heart heavy, keeping secrets my sister had empowered herself by telling. This life was fleeting, and I was still searching for the way I wanted to spend it that would make me happy, full, okay again. I didn't know what it was, not yet. But something told me I wouldn't find it here.
So a few days later, back at Delia's after working a late-afternoon bridal shower (in a log-cabin lodge, no less, very woody) and encountering another disaster of sorts (soda water dispenser explosion during toasts), I'd made it through another day with Wish that was pretty much like all the others. Until now.
"Hey Macy," Kristy said, wiping something off the hem of her black fringed skirt, part of the gypsy look she was sporting, "You coming out with us tonight?"
It was our routine now, how she always asked me. As much part of the schedule as everything in my other life was, dependable, just like clockwork. We both knew our parts. But this time, I left the script, took that leap, and improvised.
"Yeah," I said. "I am."
"Cool," she said, smiling at me as she hitched her purse over her shoulder. The weird thing was how she didn't even seem surprised. Like she knew, somehow, that eventually I'd come around. "Come on."
* * *
Chapter Seven
"Oh, man," Kristy said, carefully guiding another section of my hair over the roller, "Just wait. This is going to be great."
Personally, I wasn't so sure. If I'd known that going out with Kristy meant subjecting myself to a makeover, I probably would have thought twice before saying yes. Now, though, it was too late.
I'd had my first reservations when she'd insisted I shed my work clothes and put on a pair of jeans she was absolutely sure would fit me (she was right) and a tank top that she swore would not show off too much cleavage (she was wrong). Of course, I couldn't really verify either of these things completely, as the only objective view was the mirror on the back of the closet door, which was now facing the wall so that, in her words, I wouldn't see myself until I was "done." All I had to go on was Monica, who was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, smoking a cigarette she had dangling out the window and making occasional ummm-hmm noises whenever Kristy needed a second opinion.