The Almost Sisters(49)

I envied her that. If it hadn’t been for Digby, I’d have dug down into her suitcase and snarfled up an Ambien myself.

She apologized at the breakfast table the next morning.

“I’m sleeping so poorly these days,” she said while Wattie slid pancakes and an extra slice of bacon onto her plate. “I’ll sleep on the sofa tonight.”

Wattie answered her before I could, saying, “Nonsense!”

Birchie chimed in right behind her. “No, no, my dear, that won’t do. You’re company!”

After breakfast Birchie and Wattie unpacked what looked to me like Rachel’s whole wardrobe and hung it in the closet in the room I thought of—rightfully—as mine. Another night passed, and another. Rachel stayed cool to me, and she let them both take care of her. She didn’t do much of anything. It was as if she were on a rest cure circa 1800. She dozed and sat and stared at books and magazines. Her phone was always right beside her, and I realized she was waiting. Waiting for Jake to call with his decision. To tell her if he was going to be a man or Lowly Worm.

Then I felt sorry for her again, because I knew from experience that when JJ was done, he was done. He was going to Lowly Worm it off into the sunset.

Day five of Jake Watch, I went and sat beside her on one of the love seats.

“Can I do anything to help?” I asked, even though I knew better.

She looked at me, blinking as if her vision had gone fuzzy, and then her eyes found their focus, lasering in on me.

“Do you want to bring me tweezers?” she asked. “You’ve gained a little weight. I could reshape your eyebrows for your fuller face.”

I shook my head no, smiling close-lipped to keep in the nineteen angry things that I had traffic-jammed in my throat, all trying to get out at once. After that I left her be, because she wasn’t going to let me help her. Unless I wanted to count “fleeing my own room” as some kind of assistance.

It turned out to be a good thing. Ever since the bones were found, the whole house had felt out of balance. It was as if that sea chest had held a thousand pounds of weight and the old foundation had sighed and tilted us all a half inch to the left as soon as they’d been taken from the attic. The sewing room was at the very back of the house, past the office, down a long hall. It shared a wall with the kitchen, but there was no pass-through. Since Birchie wasn’t sewing much these days, I had it to myself. When I was there, door closed, my newly too-tight bra off, Pandora playing the Smiths for me, I had the most privacy possible in a house this full of relatives from both sides of my family. I even left my phone plugged in here, not wanting the tattletale buzz of multiple messages landing to announce that I was trading secret texts with men. Four of ’em.

The first was only our old friend Frank Darian, keeping me apprised as the justice system ground around in our family business. Our county prosecutor, Regina Tackrey, was a pit bull of a woman. And this was an election year. Frank deposed Dr. Pettery, though, and given Birchie’s illness and the bones’ unknown provenance or age, he’d blocked any police interrogation. For now. Tackrey had to show that a crime had been committed before anything else could happen to my grandmother. To that end, Tackrey had sent the bones to a forensic anthropologist in Montgomery.

I felt like Birchie was in something’s mouth, an ice-eyed reptilian something. It was rolling her around, still whole, as if she were a lozenge. But at any minute that cold-blooded animal’s mouth could bite down and shatter her. All I could do was wait and see what it decided to do to her—to all of us.

I was also texting updates and reassurances to Wattie’s sons. They’d heard what had happened through Redemption’s phone tree. Only Wattie’s iron-voiced decisiveness had kept both men from leaping willy-nilly onto planes and coming home.

“I don’t want them down here in this mess,” she’d said. “Especially Stephen. He was born chock-full of bite, and he’s got plenty of bark to go along with it. Trust me.”

I hadn’t trusted her before, and look where it had brought us. I backed her up, assuring both men that Wattie had not been hurt when my rental car met the mailbox and that the bones were mostly a Birch problem.

Last and not at all least, I was texting back and forth with Batman.

Been a while. Coming back to ATL? I’d like to see you again, he’d sent.

A glance at Facebook, a text, and I already knew his name, where he lived, and that he wanted to see me. Still, it was probably too soon to say, So I was wondering for no reason if diabetes or mental illness runs much in your family, and if you like kids, and if you’re an unmitigated jackass. I had to be more casual, more circumspect than that, but I was eighteen weeks along now. Digby was the size of a bell pepper, twisting and flexing, more real every day. Lavender had opened a window into the life of his father. I wanted to look through it.

I’d thought all day about what I should text back, but it wasn’t until I had settled in the sewing room for the night that I sent my answer.

Yeah, it has been a while. You could have messaged me, though, mister.



The word “mister” softened it. Maybe even made it flirting. I hit send, even though this wasn’t about flirting. This wasn’t about me at all. It was about my kid. I needed to get a sense of who Batman was. My preg book said I could blame the fourth-month hormones for how lush my body felt, my deep-down itchy longing to be touched and soothed and rumpled, and maybe for this, too: I wanted to flirt.