The Oleander Sisters. Elaine Hussey

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      “Maybe so.” Emily picked up the pajamas Andy had dropped on the floor. “Did you comb your hair?”

      “I forgot.” Andy raced off to the bathroom and turned on the faucet, making so much racket he sounded like a Little League baseball team. “I got important things to do, Mommy,” he called.

      “Like what?” Emily shook out his sheets and tucked the corners into his bed.

      “Build a rocket ship.” He poked his head around the door frame, his freshly wet hair sticking out at such odd angles he looked as if he’d had a big surprise. “If Nell Arms Strong can go to the moon, I can, too.”

      “Why, yes, you can. You can do anything you set your mind to, Andy.”

      “I might see my daddy up there.”

      The weight of being a single mother descended so quickly Emily had to struggle against defeat. Where was that line between making sure your son felt loved by his natural father and letting him live in a fantasy world?

      “Let’s not talk about that right now, Andy.” She caught her son’s hand, and he grabbed his old teddy bear. “Pretty soon you’ll have a real daddy in the house.”

      Andy balked in the doorway, digging his heels into the shag carpet and sticking his head around the door frame with the anxious posture of a child searching for monsters.

      “Andy, what are you doing? We don’t have time to lollygag.”

      “Looking for a Larry Alert.”

      Emily sighed. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get Andy to warm up to Larry. Heaven knows, Larry had tried, too. He’d promised to take Andy fishing and to get him a new baseball mitt. He’d even said they could build a fort together in the backyard.

      “We’ve talked about this, Andy. Until the wedding Larry will always sleep at his house, and then after, he’ll sleep here and we’ll be a family.”

      Andy crossed his eyes, his way of saying I don’t want to listen to this. Maybe she’d been wrong to let him spend so much time at the café. Sis and Sweet Mama and Beulah encouraged every little thing he did. But still, what was she to do? Day care cost too much, and in her opinion, if you didn’t have family, you didn’t have anything worth talking about.

      She went downstairs to her kitchen, which was her favorite room in the house, and began to fix breakfast while Andy raced around with his arms spread and his red cape flying out behind him. In a minute she heard him digging around in the pantry.

      “What are you doing, Andy?”

      “There’s a ginormous box in here. Big enough for me and you and Henry to go the moon.”

      He dragged out the box their new television set had come in. A gift from Larry. Just one more piece of evidence that Emily knew what she was doing by marrying a man who could not only provide for her family, but was generous besides.

      Andy raced back into the pantry and came out with an empty Tide box.

      “I’m gonna take Aunt Sis, too. She knows ’bout boats and baseball and putting worms on hooks.” Andy heaved the Tide box into the TV box. “You got any more boxes? It’s gonna take lots for a rocket ship.”

      “I’m sure there are some at the café. We can bring them home this evening.”

      “I’m gonna build my rocket ship at the café. Aunt Sis can help. She knows lots of stuff.”

      “Yes, she does. Andy, you need to eat your breakfast so we can leave for the café. I don’t know how the biscuits will turn out if I’m not there to make them.”

      “You reckon Aunt Sis and me and Henry can finish the rocket ship today?”

      “Good heavens, Andy. Why don’t you let it be a summer project?”

      “’Cause I might need to make a quick getaway.”

      The words settled into Emily’s heart like stones. What if the innocent recognized truths hidden from grown-ups?

      * * *

      Morning came softly to the Gulf Coast, tipping the waves with gold, rousing the terns from their nests along the beach and sending seagulls soaring across the water, looking for unsuspecting fish. After she’d hung up from talking to Emily, Sis threw back her sheet, slipped into sweat shorts, black T-shirt and gardening gloves, then tiptoed down the stairs.

      Her sister had been wrong about Jim. He just wasn’t ready for public appearances, especially at the café where everybody knew him and would expect to hear a blow-by-blow account of his experiences in Vietnam. Sis decided to stick to the one thing she could control, fixing up the garden, bedraggled from a brutal summer of heat and bugs. The wedding was only weeks away.

      Still, Sis didn’t mind the extra work. This was the part of the day she loved best, early morning when the dew was still on and she had the gardens to herself. Nature expected nothing of her. If she showed up to pull a few weeds and drench the beds with the water during dry spells, she was rewarded with prize-winning blossoms and tomatoes so big you could slice one and have plenty for five bacon and tomatoes sandwiches. If she didn’t show up, the resulting weeds became homes for the geckos and frogs Andy liked to catch and carry to the little frog houses he built all over the backyard with sticks and dirt.

      It always amazed Sis that he expected the frog to be grateful, to set up housekeeping and be waiting when Andy stopped by later to ask how to catch flies with your tongue. Failing to get advice from a frog, he always turned to Sis.

      Even if she didn’t have children of her own, Andy was the next best thing.

      She eased the back door shut. Sweet Mama and Beulah were still asleep on the first floor, Sweet Mama in a big bedroom filled with mahogany furniture hauled from New Orleans in a wagon, and Beulah in a sunny room that had once belonged to Sis’s mother and daddy.

      There had been no sounds coming from Jim’s room, either. Whether he was sleeping or lying on top of his covers with his eyes wide-open, Sis couldn’t say. All she could do was remember how he’d taken his duffel bag straight to his old room on the second floor last night, then shut the door.

      Carrying the prosthetic leg he’d left in the umbrella stand downstairs, Sis had gone right in behind him.

      “Don’t you ever knock?”

      “You might as well not try your stinger on me, Jim Blake. I can still whip your butt.” She laid the prosthetic leg on the end of his bed. “I’m not going to let you shut yourself up here and have a pity party.”

      “This is not pity, it’s a fact. If you want somebody to wear that leg, wear it yourself.”

      “All right. Forget the leg for now. But don’t think I’m done. We lost Daddy and Mark to war, and I’m not going to lose you, too.”

      “We lost Daddy in a car wreck.”

      As if she didn’t know. Sis had turned and walked out of the room, the sound of crunching metal and the screams of her parents echoing through her mind. She’d been in that car, a teenager happy she didn’t СКАЧАТЬ