For almost all of her life it had been the two of us versus the world, which made the whole mother-daughter dynamic a little more casual than it probably should have been. I turned on the authority when I needed to, but for the most part we lived in a harmonious household. Two really good friends, with a significant age, income, and authority gap.
But that wasn’t the case now. Now that Caitlin knew I was going through with selling the house, she’d become withdrawn. She didn’t act out, she didn’t pitch a fit. No, our disagreements took place in loud silence. Homework that used to be done at the dining room table while I did the dishes in the evening was now done in her bedroom with the door closed. Mealtime conversation was kept to a bare minimum without any of Caitlin’s usually bubbly commentary on her classmates and things happening at school or in town. After a couple of days I realized I missed her, as though she’d already left for college.
I coped the only way I knew how: I threw myself into this whole home renovation thing. That next Saturday afternoon I went to the family-owned hardware store downtown—those were few and far between these days, and if my little home project could help support Willow Creek’s economy, even better. Afterward I swung by the bookstore with a handful of paint chips to enlist the help of my sister.
Emily looked at all the chips spread out on the counter and shook her head. “This is a trick, right? These are all the same color.”
“Nope. This one is Eggshell.” I tapped a fingernail on the chip on the left. “This one’s Ecru, and that one’s Vanilla.”
She shook her head again. “They all look . . . I dunno, off-white.”
“Exactly.” I nodded vigorously. “Neutral colors.”
“Yeah.” Her nod was as listless as mine was energetic. She sighed and looked up at me. “So you’re really doing this?”
“What, painting the house?”
“No, dummy. Moving.”
“Well, yeah.” Irritation tingled through my blood. Was I going to get this shit from Emily too? Why did this seem so hard for everyone to believe? “I’ve been planning this forever.”
“How’s Caitlin taking it?”
I didn’t like the answer to that question, but Em would see through any lie. “Not great.” That was an understatement. I’d gotten the silent treatment most of this week at dinner, and Caitlin had spent the rest of the time in her room.
“I can imagine.” Emily sounded sympathetic, but it made my hackles rise. Whose side was she on? And why were there sides in the first place?
I gathered the paint chips and tapped them on the counter, neatening the stack, giving my hands something to do. “What do you want me to do? Wait for her to graduate from college? The only time she’ll be here is during breaks and over the summer if I’m lucky. Am I supposed to sit around this house, this town, on my own for four more years?” The thought was excruciating. I’d put my own life on hold the minute I became a single mother. How much longer was I going to have to wait?
“No. Hey. No.” Emily reached across the counter and laid her hand over mine. “You gave up what you wanted to do, and how you wanted to live, to put your kid first. I know that. You deserve to let your own life begin. I’m not saying you shouldn’t.” She squeezed my hand, and I squeezed back before letting go.
“Well, the first step to doing that is getting the walls painted. Which is going to take forever to do on my own, so I should probably figure out this paint and get started.”
“On your own?” Emily tilted her head like a confused puppy. “You’re not on your own.”
“Yeah, I know that, but Caitlin is barely speaking to me right now. No way am I putting her down for manual labor. I don’t want to—”
“I didn’t mean Caitlin.” Emily pressed her lips together like she was trying to hide a smile. “I mean me. When do you want to do this? Evenings? Weekends?”
“Either? Both?” I shrugged. “I don’t think Cait will notice either way. She’s spending a lot of time in her room these days.”
Emily sighed. “You get the paint, we’ll get started tomorrow afternoon. I’ll come by after I close up the store.”
Relief coursed through me in a wave. My sister was on my side after all. I wasn’t alone in all of this. “You’re a lifesaver.”
“That’s what I do,” she said with a grin, and I had to laugh.
“Some things never change.” Emily was a fixer, and during the months she’d spent living with Caitlin and me, she’d been in charge of the both of us. It was an essential part of Emily’s personality: identifying what people needed to make their lives better, and then doing everything in her power to make that happen.
I looked down at the paint chips, shuffling them in my hands like cards. “I think I like the Eggshell,” I said. “It’s warmer than the others.”
“Then that’s the one you get.” The bell over the front door chimed, and Emily looked up with a Pavlovian greeting-a-new-customer smile. The customer waved her off with a just browsing gesture and Emily turned back to me. “But take it easy on Cait, okay? This is a big year for her—prom, graduating, college, and all that—she’s probably feeling a little overwhelmed, and her mom talking about selling the house out from under her is probably stressing her out.”
She wasn’t wrong. How had she seen this when I hadn’t? “Well, hell.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “I guess you’re a better mom than I am right now.”
“Nah.” Emily shook her head. “I’m married to a high school teacher. Lots of teenage hormones in our life.”
I had to concede that. “You’re pretty good at this whole mom thing. You planning on doing it yourself soon?”
“What, kids?” A look of horror came over Emily’s face. “God, no.”
“Not yet, huh?” That made sense. They hadn’t even been married a year yet. Not everyone got pregnant super fast like I had.
“Maybe not ever. Who knows.” She shrugged. “We’ve talked about it once or twice, but I think Simon gets enough kid time with his students. Not to mention all the ones doing the Ren Faire in the summer. I think he likes the quiet at home.”
“And you’re okay with that?” I didn’t want my little sister accommodating Simon’s wishes if she didn’t agree with them.
But I should have known better. “Oh, God, yes,” she said. “Kids are great and all—especially yours—but I don’t know if they’re necessarily my thing. But we’ve been talking about adopting a dog later this summer. Maybe after Faire’s over? The summer is so busy, I think waiting for fall might be better. But I don’t know. I’ve never had a dog before and—”
“We had a dog.” I blinked at her. How had she forgotten?
Emily closed her mouth with a snap, looking confused. “We did?”
“Yeah. Rusty, remember? Our golden retriever?” My childhood had been defined by him. Running around the backyard with Rusty like he was the little brother I never . . . Oh. “Wait. We got him when I was really little, and I was fourteen when he died.”