There is nowhere else to start but with Ethan.
Ethan with his golden-brown eyes and teasing grin. He was my first friend, my first kiss, and the one person I trusted with all my secrets even as he held back so many of his.
We were kids that first day I saw him. Or I was. I’m not sure Ethan was ever a kid.
My dad scratches at the thinning part of his blond hair and bends over the griddle. “An eggplant?”
“Dad!”
“What? It looks like an eggplant.” He reaches to rotate the griddle, burns himself, then yanks his hand back with a hiss. “All right, then what is it supposed to be?”
Trying not to laugh, I hand him the lobster-shaped oven mitt I got him for Christmas. “It’s obviously an ice cream cone.” And I obviously need to work on my pancake shapes if he guessed so wrong. Normally he always knows what I’m trying to make with mine just like I always know he’s going to make his shaped like Mickey heads.
Dad—with his oven mitt on this time—turns the griddle this way, then that before shaking his head. “Sorry, sweetie. I just don’t see it. Maybe if we—” He reaches past my perch on the counter to the cabinet by my head and pulls out a tiny jar of sprinkles which he shakes over half the pancake. “Yep, there it is. Ice cream cone.”
I grin. “It would look extra ice cream coney with some whipped cream.”
Dad snaps his fingers at me before turning to the fridge then speeds up after glancing at his watch. “And I am going to be late.”
My grin slips. Summer is usually my favorite time of year because Dad is home with me all day, but since he’s teaching summer school this year, morning pancakes together are all we have. Once he slips out the door with a peck on my forehead, I get to be bored—and quiet so my mom can work from the dining room table—for hours until he comes home. Sometimes I go next door to visit Mr. and Mrs. Kelly, but my mom doesn’t like me going over there too often since she says retired people like to be by themselves and not entertain energetic nine-year-olds every day. When she repeated that to me just last week, I asked her if she was retired and my dad snorted coffee all over his pancakes.
Dad’s been gone for hours now and our tiny house feels extra tiny and extra dull. My mom has already told me to keep it down three times and since she only allows me two hours of screen time a day, I end up standing on the pillowed window seat in our front room, playing a game I just now invented called Ceiling Slap. It’s very complicated and involves leaping to try and brush the ceiling with my fingertips and stealing glances at the hallway to the dining room between each attempt in case my mom comes out and catches me. I’m setting so many Ceiling Slap records that I don’t notice the car pulling up next door until a woman gets out tugging this scrap of a boy from the back seat. He’s clutching a half-full garbage bag like everything he cares about in the world is inside it.
I immediately stop jumping thinking that the only thing I would ever hold that tightly is my dad’s hand.
Mr. and Mrs. Kelly hadn’t said anything about expecting company when I went over to help bake snickerdoodles yesterday, and my confused frown only deepens when they meet the newcomers on the porch and I hear the woman introduce the boy, Ethan, to his grandparents. I jerk back at that announcement, eyeing the boy anew with a stab of jealousy.
All I have left of my grandparents are photographs and wisps of memories that grow more indistinct the harder I try to grasp them. The Kellys have been honorary grandparents to me since we moved in two years ago and the sudden idea that I’ll have to share them isn’t exactly a welcome one.
I knew they existed, Ethan and his mom, but up until now, they’d been confined to a couple of old framed pictures on the Kellys’ walls. Whenever I asked about them, they only said their daughter and grandson lived in California and they didn’t get to see them often. So what are they doing here now and why isn’t anybody smiling?
From my window I watch the woman hand over the garbage bag to Mrs. Kelly and try to hand over Ethan too. In the end, she has to pry his hands from her. He’s skinny but strong. His mom runs her hands through stringy hair, her chin quivering so much that her entire face shakes as she says something I can’t hear but makes my heart start pounding all the same. She starts to move away then, but just her, not him. And that’s when my jealousy evaporates as I realize his garbage bag is a suitcase, and not the kind you pack for a weekend.
She leaves him without another look, not even when Ethan tries to run after her car and Mr. Kelly has to hold him back.
Something soft smacks me in the back and I nearly lose my balance on the window seat. I turn just in time to see my dad home already and arming himself with another pillow.
This has been our latest game for months now, impromptu throw pillow fights, and he’s about to win a second point before I’ve even gotten a first. But instead of diving for cover behind the couch and gathering up my own ammo, I wave him off and press my ear harder against the glass, futilely trying to hear what Mr. Kelly is saying as Ethan continues raging in his arms. “Did you know the Kellys’ daughter is back?”
Dad’s gleefully triumphant expression fades from his softly rounded face. “What?”
I nod, my cheek squeaking against the glass. “She was just here.”
Dad leans forward to peer out. “Joy was here?”
I nod. “And she left her son.”
“She what?” he whispers, mirroring my position with his nose just inches from the glass. The fading sunlight turning the wavy strands of his hair to sparks of gold.
“You don’t have to whisper.”
He gives me a look, so I fill him in on what I witnessed. He slowly sits down when I’m done, then draws the curtains shut, blocking the Kellys and their grandson from my prying eyes. I start to protest but he cuts me off. “Would you want our neighbors spying on our personal family moments? I don’t think so.”
I plop down beside him. “I’ve never seen her here before. There are barely even any pictures of them in their house.”
“Pictures of who in whose house?” Mom comes out of the dining room with paint swatches in one hand and fabric swatches in the other. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Dad bounces up off the window seat to her. “I was just on my way in to find you.”
Like always, she stiffens the tiniest bit when his arms come up around her, but he just waits until she relaxes before kissing her.
“Good day?”
“Mmmm,” she says, resting her head on his shoulder. “You?”
His arms tighten. “Better now.”
“Now what were you saying about pictures?”
I start to tell her we aren’t talking about interior decorating so she won’t be interested but Dad’s words beat mine.
“The Kellys. Joy was just here to leave her son with them.”
Her arms lower to her sides. “Oh.”
Dad nods and releases her so they can have one of those silent adult conversations with just their eyes. I hate those.
“What?” I shoot glances between my parents. “What are you eye-saying?”
“Sorry, sweetie, but some things are grown-up topics.” Dad stares at the closed curtains instead of me.
“But—”
“Rebecca.” Mom pauses after saying my name, a sure sign that I’m irritating her. “It’s none of our business.” She walks over to the window and pulls the curtains closed even tighter than Dad did, smoothing out imaginary wrinkles as she does. “And I don’t want you spying on the Kellys anymore.”
It’s not like I’m sneaking around in their bushes, but I keep that point to myself. There is one thing that I can’t stay silent about though. “But his mom just left him with people he doesn’t even know.”
My mom, who is already moving back toward the dining room, stops. “I’m sure she didn’t want to.” She looks back at Dad to take over with me. He doesn’t even need her prompting to pull me into his arms.
“Left is maybe not the right word. She brought him to stay with his grandparents because she might need some help.”
Mom shifts from foot to foot, pulling at the light brown curls spilling over her shoulders. “I don’t think we should be talking about this.”
“Help with what?” I ignore Mom’s protest, glad that my own lighter, looser curls are twisted back in a braid, and look at Dad, waiting. He’s never believed in keeping things from me.
Dad considers his words. “Parents sometimes need help for different reasons. In Joy’s case, she’s been sick for a long time, and if she’s bringing her son to her parents, then maybe she’s ready to get better.” Then he hugs me and after another silent-eye conversation between them, Mom sits on my other side and hugs me too. It isn’t that she never hugs me, but usually, I see them coming, like on birthdays or winning a soccer game. This one catches me by surprise, and it takes me a second to hug her back.
“Just leave them be, alright?” she says. “And it’s probably a good idea for you to stay away from the boy too.”
My gaze travels back to the closed curtain. My fingers are itching to reopen it.
Mom starts picking up the pillows Dad threw at me, brows pinching together at the sight of a burst seam in one corner. “I’ve asked you so many times not to roughhouse with these pillows. The fabric is vintage and—Rebecca Ann James!” My mother’s sharp voice causes me to jerk back from the window and plant my feet firmly on the floor. “I know you weren’t standing on my custom cushions with your shoes on.”
I glance down at my untied red sneakers and the Rebecca Ann James–shaped footprints on the cushions behind me.
Mom’s lips clench around her words. “Cleaning bin. Pantry. Right now.”
I start to move but Dad gestures for me to stay put, taking Mom by the shoulders and steering her back to the dining room.
“No,” she says to him, her voice dropping to more of a frustrated whisper. “I can handle this.”
This meaning me. I watch curiously to see how this will play out, but there aren’t any surprises. Dad wins and Mom gives up. She allows herself to be gently pushed back to the dining room with one final warning to Dad to leave her pillows alone and another to me to stay away from the window, which I obey for about thirty seconds. Unfortunately, the yard is empty when I sneak a peek.
It isn’t until later that night that I get another glimpse of Ethan Kelly.
The window to his room—formerly Mrs. Kelly’s guest room/sewing room—is right across from mine on the ground floor. There’s a monsoon thunderstorm that first night, and the rain on the windowpanes makes it seem like he’s crying as he sits small and huddled on the bed.
Remembering Mom’s admonition to stay away, I throw open my own window after my parents go to bed, heedless of the rain blasting into my room and soaking the floor—something I’ll definitely get grounded for the next day—and tear across our connected yards in my faded peach nightgown. I tap on his window, then tap again. He finally looks up and sees me in all my drowned-rat glory.
He opens the window.