Later That Night
I propped my bike up against the side wall of the garage and quietly shut the door behind me as I entered the kitchen. The crisp night air hadn’t obliterated the whiskey-warmth tingling in my legs.
There was a light on in the breakfast nook. Crap. I told myself to walk steady, and tall.
I wasn’t drunk. Really.
My shoulders relaxed when I caught the glint of light off of curly red hair. Maggie. I flipped the light switch, making the light go off briefly before turning it back on.
Maggie turned, and a smile spread across her face, lighting up green eyes just like the ones I see in the mirror every day. I paused for a moment. Her eyes seemed so innocent versus the reflection I’d seen staring at myself the past few years. I shook my head, telling myself I’d had too much to drink if I was drunk enough to think I’d ever felt as innocent as Maggie.
Everyone’s asleep, she signed. Her hearing aids were on the table in front of her, next to a half-full cup of hot chocolate.
I nodded, and I signed back while also speaking out loud. “Why are you still up?”
Don’t feel like sleeping yet. We were arguing about a CI again.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t here to run interference.”
Maggie looked resigned and I could imagine the discussion she’d sat through. It’d be the same as last week. My dad would say they hadn’t thought she was a candidate for cochlear implants when she was a baby, but now she was. Of course she’d want to be able to hear, or at least have some sort of approximation of hearing. Maggie would argue that she was happy the way she was.
Except I hadn’t been here to tell my father that Maggie was old enough to have a say in the surgery, and he’d yell at me to butt out.
I told my doctor I didn’t want the surgery. He won’t go through with it unless I want it. Dad isn’t happy. Maggie’s jaw took on the determined set I recognized. It was the look she got when she’d decided she was going to throw out all of the blue crayons when she was five, and when she’d decided she was going to move all of my old Nancy Drew novels to her room when she was nine.
“You don’t need to convince me, Maggs. I’m on your side.” Her shoulders relaxed, and she slumped back in her chair. She reached out and picked up her hot chocolate. “Hey, your nails are pink! That’s a first.”
I thought Ella and I were just going out for pizza for her birthday, but her mother took us out for manicures, too. My toes are purple. Maggie blushed slightly as she signed.
“I love it! Should we do something like that for your birthday next month? Or go back to that Escape Room Place you loved? Think we could solve the puzzle in less than an hour again?” I sat down next to her at the table.
Maggie shrugged, and looked down at the red placemat. I motioned to get her attention. “What’s up?”
I wanted to go to the ice cream house with my friends from school for my birthday, but Mom thinks that’s not big enough. She wants it to be memorable.
“Yeah, she went wacky over my thirteenth birthday, too,” I said. “Do you remember? We had that big pool party at the club.”
Didn’t you do that last summer for your sixteenth?
“Yeah, except my thirteenth was pool-and-pineapple themed.”
Maggie’s whole face lit up. That’s right! I remember the pineapple cake. But why did you pick it? You hate pineapple.
“I’ve always hated it. I didn’t eat any at the birthday party, either.” I said. Someone had handed me a slice of cake after I’d blown out the candles and the sight of the pineapple slices on top had made me gag.
Harper…Maggie trailed off.
“What?”
Your signing is a little sloppy.
“Sorry, Mags.”
Are you drunk?
“Nah, just had a little bit. Don’t you worry about it.”
Daniel was over for a while tonight.
“I didn’t realize he was out of rehab.” I glanced over at the family portrait on the wall of the breakfast room. It was about ten years old. Three-year-old Maggie and six-year-old me were wearing matching pink dresses with flowers in our hair. Nine-year-old Daniel had a matching flower in the pocket of his charcoal gray suit, which matched our dad’s. Mom’s hair was curled over her shoulders. We all looked angelic. Perfect from the outside; polished. Like an apple secretly rotting from the inside out.
My attention snapped back to Maggie, who signed something for the second time.
He was just visiting and making amends. Again. He went back. He has another three weeks. Or months. Three something.
“Then I’ll just catch him next time he comes by to apologize.”
Harper!
“Just kidding, Maggie. Maybe we can stop by and see him next week. I’m pretty sure they have family visiting hours. The last rehab place did.”
She nodded at me. I gave her a quick hug after I stood up.
“See you tomorrow, Tiger. Don’t stay up too late.”
Night. She turned back to her cocoa.