Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
The air smells like Sharpie ink and cheap bourbon. It was Ruth’s turn to bring the drinks. Margie always goes for sparkling white wine, while Mom likes red.
The three women are at the kitchen table, glasses half full, a stack of postcards between them.
I’m used to this. Election season means the evenings that might’ve once been dedicated to TV or card games are relegated to postcard parties, writing to remind people to vote or sharing information about their favorite candidates.
The radio hums softly in the background—local news, always local news.
“Hey, honey,” Ruth says, looking up from her work and lowering the glasses on her nose. “My god, you’re getting tall. Every day, it’s like you’ve grown an inch. But sometimes it still sneaks up on me. Betty, she’s gonna be taller than all of us before long. Look at her.”
“Tell me about it,” Mom says, not looking up. She dots the end of a sentence like it personally offended her.
“Still looks shrimpy to me.” The gruff voice comes from behind me, and I don’t bother to glance in his direction. Will bumps against me to prove a point, and when I finally give in and look at him, he holds a hand level with his forehead, still a whole half-head above mine.
I glare. “Go home, Will. And by home, I mean your home planet.”
He mocks my sneer, moving past me to the fridge. He smells like cut grass and sweat and summer. “Betty, you got any Sprite?”
“In the drawer,” she says. “Be nice, Opal.”
“Yeah, Opie, be nice,” he says, his head buried in the fridge.
“Mom!” I cry, waving a hand at him.
“It’s a nickname,” he defends himself with a laugh. “Jeez, someone’s on her period.”
All three women look up at once. The air shifts. Sharp. I try to hide my grin. Someone’s about to get it.
“Fitzwilliam,” Mom warns him.
I snort, and he groans. Who wouldn’t hate a first name like that? It makes him sound like some founding father rather than the idiot boy next door.
“Son, do you need a chore? The yard’s getting a little tall, and my scissors have been looking for something to do with themselves,” Margie says, only half teasing. He’s been forced to cut part of the yard with scissors before, after he snuck out and stole her car.
“I was just thinking my ceilings need to be repainted, too,” Ruth says.
“Ha-ha,” Will responds, tipping up the can of Sprite to his lips.
“You comin’ or what?” Will’s brother, Cory, waits in the doorway to the kitchen, sweat glistening on his brow. He’s already sunburned on the nose, always the first to burn of the three of us. “Oh, hey, Opal. You wanna play kickball with us?”
I open my mouth to answer, heart lifting despite myself, but Will moves past me. “No. Come on. Gross. Are you kidding?”
The lift drops just as fast. Of course.
Cory tosses me a sympathetic look, one side of his mouth drawn in, but turns away, rushing out the door.
“You two are gonna have to get along someday,” Margie says thoughtfully, sticking a stamp in the corner of her postcard. Her tone says she believes it, like the mothers have convened and decided it so.
“Sorry, Marge. Your youngest son’s a dud.”
“She means stud,” Will corrects, slamming the door behind him. It rattles on its frame. He always shuts things harder than necessary.
I shake my head, opening the fridge to get my own Sprite. I wait until I hear them leave the porch before I let my face fall. “You guys need any help?”
“Oh, honey, we’ll always take help from our favorite girl,” Ruth says, patting the empty seat next to her. I slide into the chair between her and Margie, tucked into the warm safety of their laughter, pretending I don’t hear Will’s voice carrying across the yard.
Pretending I don’t care.
Pretending I never have.