What's Mine and Yours(65)

“You know, if this wasn’t where I was from, I’d love it here.”

Diane chuckled. “It’s divine. You shouldn’t have stayed away so long.”

“It’s easy to take good things for granted. Don’t assume you’ll be able to have kids when it’s your time, Diane. It’s not as easy as you think it is. Start as early as you can. Start yesterday. Do you want kids?”

“Sure,” Diane said noncommittally.

“You’d make a beautiful mother.”

“You too.”

“Maybe,” Noelle murmured. “It’s easy to be a good mother when it’s all imaginary. I’m not sure I’d offer the right kind of example. You know, sometimes I think back to high school and that play I was in my junior year. Do you remember that? I think about how brave I was then, how determined. I felt like anything was possible—all I had to do was get out, leave North Carolina.”

“You achieved all that.”

“In some ways, that was the best time of my life. I was in love. I loved Gee.”

“Don’t let the nostalgia get to you now,” Diane said. “This isn’t the time for idealizing first love.”

Noelle nudged her sister. “What do you know about first love? You’ve never brought anybody home.”

“Neither has Margarita.”

“No, but you could always smell the men on her. We saw her hickeys. I didn’t have to wonder about her.”

“You wonder about me?”

“All the time, baby sister. And one day, I know, you’re going to surprise us all with all the secrets you’ve been keeping.”



Alma made them breakfast: buttermilk biscuits and eggs, a salad of kale, cabbage, and fennel, all from the garden. Diane made coffee and juiced carrots. They played romantic salsa while they whirled around each other in the kitchen. Margarita scrolled through her phone, and Noelle rifled through a day-old copy of the paper, while they waited to be served at the table.

“This is cute,” Margarita said. “Your morning routine. Do y’all do this every day?”

“Not usually,” Alma answered. “But today is special—you’re all here.”

She joined them at the table, her plate heaped with vegetables and eggs, a biscuit glittering with orange jam. She’d painted her nails in the night, a blood red. She wore a blazer over a Sleater-Kinney T-shirt, cutoff jeans, and knee-high leather boots.

“You dress like that to spend time with the dogs?” Margarita said. Alma had a look, and she liked it.

“I just wear what I want to wear. Otherwise, I’d be in jeans and a T-shirt every day.”

Diane laughed and slid next to Alma at the table. “You’re going to get mud all over that outfit.” She stopped herself from reaching for Alma’s hand, palm up on the table. It was too easy to touch her.

“I almost had a roommate in L.A.,” Margarita said. “But she was a total bitch. It’s probably for the best we never moved in together—I might have killed her. And her little dog, too.”

Noelle arched an eyebrow at Margarita, turned back to the paper. She had been unusually quiet this morning, her face pallid, her eyes pink around the edges. Margarita had caught Diane throwing glances at her, and even Alma kept offering her more salad, more coffee. They were doting on her, and Margarita could tell something was up. If she asked outright, they’d never tell her. She smashed up her biscuit with her fork so it would look like she’d eaten some of it, and tried to figure out how to get them to spill whatever was going on. They were talking about a story in the paper—a blighted strip mall was closing; a bowling alley and brewery would replace the crafts store and laundromat.

“All that effort Mama put into that campaign, all her worrying, and will you look at this town? Even the east side is getting nice now.” She turned to Alma. “Diane hasn’t told you? About our mother, the activist? You won’t like the story. And you probably won’t like Lacey May after you hear it—if you even like her now. The truth is both our parents are totally crazy. They just have different brands of crazy. The only sane member of our family, ever, has been Jenkins. Did Diane tell you about our dog?”

“You all are going out to look for your father today, right?” Alma swiftly defused the minefield Margarita had laid out. She hadn’t followed her lead, but she hadn’t cut her out of the conversation either. Margarita was impressed.

With her dark nails and big curls, the pink Planned Parenthood mug she held with both hands, Alma was a perfect shot in black and white. Margarita took her picture with her phone.

“What are you doing?” Alma said.

“Just capturing the moment. I love your whole aesthetic.”

Alma left the table under the pretense of clearing her plate. She leaned against the sink and went on eating, angling her body away from Margarita, her phone.

Margarita quickly uploaded the shots from that morning: the view from the porch (Tree Therapy), their spread for breakfast (Farm to Table), Alma (The New South), and her sisters (Catching Up and Old Friends). She didn’t mention she was home.

“We should be leaving,” Diane said, and she started to explain the plan for the morning. She and Noelle would take Alma’s truck. They’d drop her off at the camp and then work their way through the motels Robbie had frequented over the years, the auto shops where he’d picked up work. Margarita could take Diane’s sedan around to the east side, check out the businesses there, the bakeries, the carnicería, the Súper Súper.