Julia's Daughters

“I don’t think it’s going good,” I tell Haley.

“Well, it’s not going well,” she corrects me.

I stick my tongue out at her.

We’re supposed to be doing the dishes, but I keep coming up with excuses to go into Aunt Laney’s dining room. If I stand on the far side of the table, I can hear Mom and Dad talking out on the front porch.

Mom and Dad were supposed to go out to dinner tonight. Like on a date. Aunt Laney and the boys were going to stay here and have spaghetti dinner with Haley and me. But Dad didn’t want to go out, so Laney and the boys took some spaghetti and went to stay at the lake cottage for a couple of days. To give us some space, while Dad’s here.

“Quit being nosy,” Haley tells me, coming into the dining room to get the water glasses off the table. “Get in there and load the dishwasher.”

I glance at the window. I can hear Dad talking, but I can’t really hear what he’s saying. His tone isn’t good, though. He’s talking quietly. He sounds really serious . . . and sad.

I walk back into the kitchen. Haley’s rinsing dishes in the sink. “Help me load,” she tells me.

I stand there chewing on my lower lip. “You don’t think Dad’s going to make me go back to Vegas with him, do you? Because I don’t want to go back. I want to stay here with you and Mom.”

She glances at me and then goes back to loading dirty dishes. “Four days ago, you didn’t want to speak to me ever again,” she says, putting a glass in the top rack of the dishwasher. “Now you want to stay here with me?”

“You want me to stop talking to you?” I ask. I don’t really want to stop talking to her. I didn’t like how I felt when I was doing it. It made me feel alone. It’s bad enough having to live without Caitlin. I don’t want to live without Haley, too.

Haley turns to face me, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. Tonight she’s wearing a pair of Liam’s gray sweatpants, Aunt Laney’s green fleece, and green sock/slipper things someone made Liam, but he doesn’t like them. It’s the first time I’ve seen my sister not wearing black in I don’t know how long. She took her black fingernail polish off too.

“No, I don’t want you to stop talking to me,” Haley tells me. “I don’t want you to ever do that again. Okay? I don’t care if you’re mad at me. Because we’re still sisters. Okay?”

When I don’t answer right away, she says, “Okay?”

“Okay,” I tell her, loud.

“Good, now come load the silverware.” She points to the sink.

I slowly make my way over. I finally got my SpongeBob sleep pants back from Mom and I’m wearing them. I like them so much that I might wear them again tomorrow. “When do you think we’ll have to go back?”

“I don’t know. If Mom can convince Dad to move here, maybe we don’t have to go back at all. You could just enroll in school here. You could go to Garret’s school. Megan goes there.”

I think about that as I turn on the faucet and watch water run down the drain. Aunt Laney has a cool big white kitchen sink like you see on TV in old farmhouses. “Do you want to stay here?” I ask her.

“Why? You’ve lived in Las Vegas for almost eighteen years. That’s where your friends are. That’s where our home is.”

“My friends aren’t really my friends anymore. And it’s where our house is,” she says. “But it doesn’t feel like it’s home anymore. You know?”

I like the way she’s talking to me, like I’m older than ten.

“Mom thinks . . . I think,” Haley says, “that maybe here would be better for us because Caitlin never lived here.”

“But she came on vacation here,” I remind her. I’m not trying to argue with her. I’m just saying.

Haley looks down at me with her sad brown eyes. “It’s not the same thing, though. I don’t feel like it’s the same. Do you?”

I rinse off a fork and drop it in the silverware basket. I have to reach around Haley and I bump into her, but I don’t mind. I don’t feel like she’s an infectious disease anymore. I don’t know if I’ve completely forgiven her for what happened, but I’m glad we’re talking again because now I don’t feel so lonely. “I guess not,” I say. I think for a second and then I look at her. “If I tell you a secret, will you swear you won’t laugh? And you can’t tell Mom.”

She turns to me. “I won’t laugh. But is it dangerous?”

I shake my head.

“Then I won’t tell Mom.”

I look down at the running water. It still feels weird to be talking to her after not talking to her for months. I mean she’s still Haley, but she seems different, too. Everything seems different now. “When we were home,” I say softly, “I talked to her sometimes.”

Haley reaches out and smoothes my hair and looks at me the way Mom does sometimes. “Me too.”

“You did?” I look up at her. “Did she talk back to you?”

She shakes her head no. “She talk to you?”

I very slowly nod my head yes.

She grins. “Lucky dog.”