CHAPTER FIVE
Their car is the first thing I notice when I ease into my parents’ driveway.
“Auntie Tess and Uncle Aaron are here!” shouts Lisset, wriggling with happiness in the backseat.
“Yes, I see.”
After I park, Lisset flies out of the car and disappears into the house. I follow more slowly. Unlike my daughter’s unreserved delight, I’m always more conflicted when it comes to my sister. Much like I am with onions. I love them, but they also give me heartburn.
I shed my scarf and jacket in the entrance hall and make my way to the kitchen. The scent of chocolate chip cookies swirls around me. I’m tumbled back to a childhood of scraped knees and fresh apple juice and belly laughs around the kitchen table. My parents’ house is everything whole and welcoming in the world.
Tess is crouched down listening to Lisset’s edited recounting of her day. My sister’s long, curly-brown hair is tied back in a simple ponytail, with a few pieces framing her face.
I pour myself a glass of water while I wait for Lisset to finish. When she finally runs out of steam and wanders off to look for my mom, snagging an apple on her way out the kitchen, I ask Tess, “Why aren’t you at your usual Wednesday night get-together with Sofia and Kenzie?”
Tess straightens. “Kenzie has a bachelorette thing, so we rearranged for tomorrow.” Her green eyes light up with curiosity. “Why aren’t you at home? Avoiding your new neighbor?”
“No.” Yes . At least, that’s part of the reason I’m here.
“Well, I’m glad you decided to drop by,” she says, flinging her arms out as she steps toward me. “I’ve missed you.”
My body stiffens at her approach. “Tess, I don’t hug.”
“Of course you don’t,” she replies breezily, throwing her arms around me. “Lucky for you, I do.”
She holds onto me for at least twenty seconds. I stand there, enduring it, but not altogether loathing the fact that she’s so demonstrative with her affection. She gives me an extra squeeze before ending the mild torture.
Stepping back, she asks, “How was your burger shoot?”
“Uneventful.”
“Did you make any assistants cry?”
“It was a small shoot. There were no assistants.”
“You must feel so disappointed and unfulfilled.”
“Not really,” I reply. “You’re here and I derive great pleasure from tormenting you.”
“Girls!” Mom barks, entering the kitchen like a stealth bomber. Tess and I both jump guiltily. “I see you two are wasting no time going straight for each other’s jugular.”
“We’re just joking around, Mom,” Tess protests.
“It’s our way of bonding,” I add.
Mom skewers us both with a look. “Why can’t you behave like normal people and bond over something else, like knitting?”
Uh, because I’d probably end up stabbing Tess with my knitting needle. And who knits nowadays, anyway? Judging from Tess’s expression, we’re on the same wavelength.
I get Mom’s frustration, though. I don’t know what it is with me and my sister. We’re both professional working women, but when we’re together we reflexively regress to our teenage selves.
“How’s Dad doing?” I ask Mom in an effort to redirect her attention. Dad struggles with chronic back pain. He has good days and bad days.
Her shoulder’s fall a little. “He’s having a flare-up so he’s resting in bed.”
“I’ll go check on him.”
Dad’s a little woozy from the painkillers. I sit on the edge of his bed and gently squeeze his hand. His eyes flutter open and he smiles. My heart cinches. No matter how much pain he’s in, he always manages to dig up a smile for me. We chat for a bit, but I don’t mention any of my concerns regarding Lisset. He doesn’t need to shoulder anything else that will bow his back more. I notice he’s tiring so I kiss his forehead and leave the room, leaving him to his dreams.
When I return to the kitchen, Lisset and Tess are seated at the kitchen table, chopping up ingredients for a green salad to accompany the main meal. In winter, my mom typically has the slow cooker going. Today, she tells me, it’s a Thai chicken curry simmering away. Knowing her, there’s probably two other side dishes on hand and garlic bread in the oven. She cooks like she’s hosting a football team every night.
“Where’s Aaron?” I ask, plucking a cherry tomato from the salad bowl on the table.
Mom smacks my hand.
“ Ow ! I’m hungry.”
“You work with food all day,” my mother retorts. “How can you be hungry?”
I rub my hand. “I don’t usually eat at work.”
Behind Mom’s back, Tess pops a tomato into her mouth and chews with a blissful look on her face. I wait until my mom’s not looking before I respond with a rude gesture.
“Aaron’s helping Grandma with Google,” Mom says.
I raise my eyebrows in surprise. “He’s a brave man.”
“I’m not sure he was given a choice.”
Just then Aaron wanders into the kitchen, looking a little dazed.
“Uncle Aaron!” Lisset abandons her brutal hacking of the feta and leaps out of her seat, throwing her arms around his legs. He pats her head absentmindedly, still clearly recovering.
“Do you need a drink, honey?” Tess asks, biting her lip to stop her grin from spreading.
Aaron swallows, dragging a hand through his dark hair. “I’m not sure even alcohol can erase the memory of the last hour.”
I grab a beer from the fridge and pass it to him. “Thanks, Kate.” He takes a long swallow. “It’s good to see you.”
“You too.”
And I mean it. Nearly two years ago, though, that wasn’t the case.
When I first met Aaron, I suspected he had secrets that would hurt Tess and I was right. Fortunately, they managed to work through their issues and now Aaron Sinclair is my brother-in-law and the best thing to happen to Tess. He’s crept into my heart too, and now he’s an integral member of our family.
The bleak turbulence that used to crawl into Aaron’s blue eyes has been replaced with a measure of peace. That happened only after he fell in love with Tess. And only after she insisted he see a therapist to help him deal with tragedy in his past.
Every now and then, I catch a hint of sadness that I think will linger with him into his twilight years, but grief no longer swamps him as it once did.
“Everything okay, Kate?” he asks now, pinning me with his serious gaze.
I swallow the sudden lump in my throat. The answer feels as complex as the question. Aaron is the one person I don’t want to lie to. After a hostile beginning, we gradually adjusted our view of one another and now share a strange closeness, a source of great delight to my sister.
Before I can answer him, my small and feisty grandmother breezes into the kitchen, carrying the Google Home device. She deposits it onto the counter and plugs it in. Then her kind green eyes snag mine. “Kate! Lovely surprise having you and Lisset drop by. We’re having chicken curry, which I love, but it gives me the runs.”
“Hi, Grandma.” I stoop slightly to kiss her cheek.
She carries out a brisk surveillance of my face. “You look tired.”
I’m exhausted all the way down to my bones, but I say, “And you look gorgeous.”
Grandma pats her hair and preens a little, as I knew she would. She lives with my parents, moving in after my grandfather died a little over three years ago. For the most part, the arrangement suits everyone. There are occasional...blips, mostly to do with my grandmother’s bizarre love/hate relationship with Google. A relationship none of us dare analyze too deeply.
“I want to show you all something,” Grandma announces, rubbing her hands together.
Aaron makes some sort of weird, strangled noise.
My mother’s eyes narrow. “Please tell me, Mom, that whatever you’re showing us has nothing to do with Google.”
“What else would I be showing you, Joelle? I’m too old for any sort of striptease.”
Tess almost spits out the second tomato she popped into her mouth.
“Kate,” Grandma orders, “turn the lights off in the kitchen.”
Mom frowns. “I need to finish up dinner.”
Grandma waves a dismissive hand. “This won’t take long.”
With vast reluctance, Mom mutters, “Fine.”
“But I don’t like the dark, GG,” Lisset whines. GG is her nickname for her great grandmother.
It’s only 6 p.m. but feels like midnight. Darkness descends early in winter.
“Cuddle up with Auntie Tess then,” Grandma instructs.
Lisset hops onto my sister’s lap.
“Aaron helped me set it up,” explains Grandma, “but I made a few tweaks.”
Aaron is looking at the floor, avoiding eye contact with everyone.
I feel a pinch of nerves, a feeling this is not going to go well.
I flip the light switch and the kitchen goes dark. Lisset emits a little squeal and Tess wraps her arms around her.
“Okay, watch this.” My grandmother leaves a dramatic pause. “Hey, Google, turn on the lights.”
Silence. We all wait in anticipation.
Then a robotic voice intones, “Okay, playing Turn on the Lights from Spotify.”
Music fills the kitchen, painfully loud because Grandma’s hearing is slowly deteriorating and she’s set the volume on Google to maximum.
I hear Tess smother a laugh and Grandma mutter something I hope Lisset’s little ears don’t pick up over the rising swell of the music.
“Why aren’t the lights coming on, GG?” Lisset yells in an effort to be heard over the music. “I really, REALLY don’t like the dark.”
“Hey, Google—” Grandma begins.
“Hmm, something went wrong,” Google interrupts. “Try again in a few seconds.”
In exasperation, my mother shoves her face right up to the device. “STOP!” she yells.
The silence is deafening. And we’re still in the dark.
“Let me try again,” Grandma insists. “Hey, Google, turn on the lights.”
The lights in the living room switch on, but the kitchen remains in shadowy darkness.
My mother heaves a resigned sigh, and I can feel the force of my grandmother’s indignation from here. I’m scouring my mind for something to say, but I’m coming up blank. Watching Grandma interact with Google is like watching one of those epic disaster movies, where you know there’ll be a massive earthquake, followed by a tsunami, and then you’re waiting for the meteorite to hit.
Tess is no help. She’s buried her face in Lisset’s hair, but I can still glimpse her shoulders shaking with silent laughter.
“Hey Google, get a life,” Grandma snaps.
Google replies, “I found some photos for ‘Get it up.’”
On the heels of my gasp, Aaron quickly unplugs Google, then flips the kitchen switch so we’re bathed in light. “Looks like Google still has a few kinks that need to be ironed out,” he says, trying for diplomacy.
Grandma mutters something about how she’s more than willing to flatten Google’s kinks with an iron. Thankfully, though, she moves on quickly and joins us in preparing dinner. We eat at the dining room table, the conversation light and easy. Tess tells us about a new greeting card range she’s working on, Aaron updates us on his latest cybersecurity project, and Mom asks why I’m taking on more advertising shoots as opposed to editorial work (the money is better, especially when I’m living paycheck to paycheck).
I wait until Lisset and Grandma have disappeared into Grandma’s living room to watch one of the British period dramas they’re hooked on before I bring up what Lisset’s teacher said about her sudden aversion to reading.
Tess scrunches up her nose. “That doesn’t sound like Lisset.”
“I know.”
Sensing my unhappiness, she reaches across the table and squeezes my hand. My sister might drive me to distraction at times, but she’s all about family and her loyalty is fierce and unshakeable. “This is probably just a phase,” she suggests. “Lisset will come out of it.”
“That’s what I’m hoping.” And the reassurance I needed to hear.
“You girls were such readers,” Mom says. “I was forever driving to the library because you finished your books so quickly.”
Mom’s right. It hits me like a punch to the gut. I forgot how much I loved escaping into a writer’s imagination, how I could spend hours lost in the pages of a book. When did I stop reading? And why did it stop mattering to me?
“Do you want me to talk to Lisset?” Tess asks, dragging me from my thoughts.
“I thought at first it might be a good idea, but now I’m thinking that’ll probably overwhelm her and just cause her to dig in her heels.”
Tess widens her eyes. “I can’t imagine where your daughter gets her stubbornness.”
“Maybe from the aunt she idolizes,” I fire back, but there’s no sting in my words. Between the two of us, Lisset didn’t stand much of a chance.
Lisset wanders into the kitchen, complaining that Grandma fell asleep on the couch and she can’t hear the TV over her snoring.
My mom gives me a questioning look, silently asking if she should pursue the subject with Lisset. After a brief hesitation, I nod my assent. Mom’s signature look, combined with her soft, steely tone, is like being injected with a truth serum. As children, Tess and I were helpless to resist and all sorts of uncomfortable truths spilled out of our mouths. Normally, it has the same effect on Lisset. But this time, strangely enough, my daughter remains reticent even under my mom’s gentle interrogation.
I decide to leave her be for now.
“Can we go home, Mom?” she asks.
I kiss her forehead. “I’m going to help tidy up, then we’ll leave, okay?”
“Okay.”
“C’mon, kid,” Aaron says to Lisset, heading toward the living room. “Let’s see if you can beat me at checkers.”
After they leave, Tess and I shoo Mom out the kitchen so she can check on Dad. We cart the dirty plates and glasses to the sink, then I wipe down the counters while Tess loads the dishwasher. Everything in me rises up in protest when I catch sight of what she’s doing. How can one person be so spectacularly bad at such a simple task?
Without looking at me, Tess says, “I can feel you shooting laser eyes my way.”
“I’m trying to understand the logic of your method.”
“Everyone has different ways of stacking,” she responds, unperturbed. “There’s Kate’s way and then there’s Tess’s way. Today, it’s Tess’s way.”
“Your way is the wrong way.”
“Relax,” she tells me, which only serves to make me even less relaxed. “Everything will still get cleaned.”
“No item in the dishwasher should be touching or overlapping,” I point out. “Otherwise, they won’t clean properly.”
“Not everything has to be done your way.”
“It’s not my way. It says so in the manual.”
Tess gapes at me. “You’ve read the manual?”
“Of course.” I gape back at her. “You didn’t?”
“Why on earth would I read a dishwasher manual?”
“So you can stack the plates and glasses properly,” I emphasize, unable to hold back the sarcasm.
“Please,” she scoffs. “No one reads the manual.” In true Tess fashion, she provides no evidence to back up her claim.
Aaron wanders into the kitchen, Lisset hanging off him like a monkey, which he tolerates with a great deal of patience.
Tess pounces straight away. “Honey, did you read our dishwasher manual?”
Aaron looks surprised she’s even asked the question. “Of course.”
I give my hands a brisk squirt of hand cream and shoot her a triumphant look. “Hah!”
Her shoulders slump in defeat. “I should have known.” When Lisset clambers down, Tess grabs a fistful of Aaron’s shirt and yanks him toward her. “I love you, but don’t ever expect me to read a manual.”
He gives her ponytail a playful tug and smiles down at her. “You know, love, there are all sorts of manuals out there and not all of them are boring. In fact, some of them are extremely...informative.”
Tess’s lips curve into a smile. “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to read one of those manuals and demonstrate your knowledge to me.”
“Mission accepted,” Aaron replies with a gleam in his eyes.
It’s as though they’ve completely forgotten I exist. Newlyweds are almost unbearable to be around. “Still in the room, people!” I announce in a loud voice.
“Sorry, Kate,” Aaron replies, not taking his eyes off Tess.
When Lisset stifles a yawn, I say, “Okay, we’re heading out so I can get her to bed.”
“Goodbye, munchkin!” Tess calls out.
“Not a munchkin,” Lisset mumbles sleepily.
“You’re my munchkin,” she stresses with a pirate growl.
“Do you want us to follow you home?” Aaron asks.
My house is ten minutes from my parents’ place, but I appreciate the offer. “Thanks, Aaron, but I’ll be fine.”
Mom sees us out, juggling four containers of leftovers for me. I make sure Lisset is buckled in, but before I can walk around to the driver’s side, Mom asks in a quiet voice, “You okay, Kate? Other than what’s going on with Lisset, is there anything else worrying you?”
An unexpected wave of emotion rolls over me. No matter the facade I put up, my mother possesses the parental super sense that picks up whenever something is off-kilter. But her question is a knot I have no desire to untangle.
“I’m fine,” I tell her. “Just tired.”
The age-old excuse people haul out when they want to hide the real reason they’re not coping.
After a beat, she says, “I can’t sit in your skin, but I can sit with you wherever you’re at.”
I stare at her. “Have you been listening to one of those parenting podcasts again?”
She flushes slightly, looking sheepish. “You know you can tell me anything.”
I nod. I wish, just this once, I could give in and tell her. But some things feel so shameful you can’t tell anyone, not even your own mother.