A Daniels is not something anyone in Verona Cove has wanted to be for six months now. Her ignorance is a relief. Like we don’t have to fit into our New Life of Mourning as long as Vivi is here. We can breathe easy in our stiflingly sad house.
“And thank you especially to Jonah for the most beautiful meal I’ve seen in ages. I swear to the Man in the Moon, if it tastes half as good as it looks, I’m going to come meowing back at your front door for table scraps.” She winks at Isaac. His cheeks redden beneath the rims of his glasses. “So . . . cheers!”
Vivi holds up her glass and clinks it against everyone else’s. Leah looks like she’s been invited to a tea party with Alice in Wonderland.
Bekah scrutinizes Vivi’s face, in awe of her. “So, your mom lets you wear that lipstick?”
Oh God, kill me. Someone. Anyone. End it. My sister is going to grill Vivi about her appearance. And parents.
Vivi smiles. It makes her lips look like an apple slice. Red Delicious. “My mom is a painter, so, really, she can’t get mad if I paint my lips, now, can she?”
“Cool,” Bekah says under her breath. She’s resting her left hand in her lap, the way Vivi is.
“Oh my God,” Vivi says, swallowing her first bite. “This is the best salad I’ve ever had in my life. Literally. What is in this thing? Like, manna or something?”
“What’s manna?” Leah frowns down at her bowl. “This cheese tastes like barf.”
“Leah,” Naomi snaps. “That’s not nice.”
Vivi just laughs. “Manna is the food they eat in heaven. And stinky cheese is delicious cheese; you just don’t realize that until you’re older. Trust me, though. Someday, you’ll eat this salad again and realize, holy moly, it’s sprinkled with magic.”
I clear my throat. “It’s just lettuce, Gorgonzola, honey-glazed pecans, and diced pear. The dressing is a plum vinaigrette.”
“He makes the dressing himself,” Bekah says. I’m pleasantly surprised that she’d brag about me.
“It’s kinda more of a fall salad,” I say, “because of the—”
“Oh no.” Bekah groans, glancing at Vivi. “I got him started. We’re gonna have to hear about food for the rest of dinner.”
Okay. No longer pleased with Bekah.
Vivi launches into a story about how she once ate armadillo by accident, which has everyone cracking up. Even Naomi wants to laugh. I mean, she’s not actually laughing—she’s ripping pieces of her pizza crust off and chewing them mercilessly. But I can tell she wants to laugh. Once my sister decides to be grouchy, she never changes her mind.
My gaze moves clockwise, taking each person in. The kitchen feels warmer, fuller. Vivi teases Silas and Isaac, who seem sheepish and delighted by the attention. She compliments Bekah and asks Naomi questions about her internship. My siblings are locked into her, rotating in her orbit. I am, too. It’s like I can’t look away.
“Oh my God, Jonah, look at this dessert. Are you kidding me?” Vivi stabs at the cobbler. “Black cherries are my life. I’m serious. They’re my absolute favorite fruit; I’m totally obsessed, like cannot stop eating them the past few weeks.”
“Jonah and me are obsessed, too!” Leah says. “We eat cherries every day over the summer, but we know how to spit out the pits, so it’s okay.”
Silas shoots me a look, impressed that someone coaxed Leah that far out of her shell.
After dinner, Vivi announces that she’ll hang around to color more with Leah. I bus the table with help from my brothers, and Naomi disappears upstairs, still annoyed with me. Bekah sits on the couch pretending to read while still watching Vivi like she’s a unicorn in the wild. My hands dunk dishes into warm sink water, but I keep stealing glances into the living room. Vivi is lying on her stomach, coloring alongside Leah on the floor. Their knees are bent, feet swaying up in the air. My eyes follow Vivi’s body from her red toenails, up her legs, tiny shorts. When she laughs at something Leah said, it’s loud and happy and changes the whole shape of her face. The knife in my hands clatters into the metal sink.
“Jonah!” Leah yells. “Come look!”
I glance away so Vivi won’t realize I was already looking. God. I once saw a video online of a dog crashing into a screen door. Over and over. He couldn’t figure it out. This is me and trying to be cool in front of Vivi.
“Come look at my picture!” Leah demands.
Fortunately, I have a master’s degree in Leah’s Art Criticism. I say everything looks beautiful and ask the artist lots of questions about her color choices. She loves her princess coloring books so much that I’m surprised she’s letting Vivi use one.
“Wow! Your mermaid looks just like in the movie,” I tell Leah. Then I steal a glance at Vivi’s coloring page. Her princess has purple hair, thick-rimmed glasses, and a lip ring.
Leah examines Vivi’s drawing, too. “Belle doesn’t have purple hair. Or glasses.”
“This isn’t Belle,” Vivi says. “This is her twin sister, Claudette. She goes to a university where she’s studying marine biology. She has to wear her glasses because she’s farsighted and because she reads a lot of textbooks.”
“But why is her hair purple?”
“Because she goes scuba diving sometimes, so she’s seen how many colors there are underwater.”