Henry's Sisters. Cathy Lamb

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      Cecilia took a day off work from her kindergarteners to help us get Momma to the hospital the next morning. She swung by in her van and Janie and I got Momma settled in the front seat.

      The sun was peeping up, the sky golden and pink, the wind sauntering by, relaxed, as if it had all the time in the world today to see Momma off. All was still, sleepy, and content.

      Except for the three of us sisters, who were twisting in the middle of an emotional battlefield filled with booby traps and land mines.

      Momma was not in a good mood. The breakfast I made her was “flat.” Janie was making her nervous. I hadn’t snuck a man up to my room last night, had I? The kitchen was messy, she never had a messy kitchen. Cecilia was late. She’s always late. “Not an organized woman. She’s a mess. A mess.”

      “Stop spinning around me,” Momma snapped, attaching a pearl earring. “Do not tell me to relax, Isabelle! Cease mumbling to yourself, Janie. Or are you speaking to an imaginary friend? Cecilia, for God’s sakes, you have enlarged. You’re bigger than you were yesterday! You have got to stop eating. One of the biggest days of my life, if not the biggest day of all because I am getting open-heart surgery, if you girls care to remember, and here you are, making me late!”

      “We’re not late, Momma,” Janie said, tentative. “Don’t you worry—”

      “I am worried, Janie. I’m worried that I have a daughter who has written nine books and all she does is murder people in bizarre, twisted ways.”

      “I don’t murder people, Momma—”

      “You do! What is going on in that head of yours? This is not the lady I raised you to be!” She wriggled in her perfectly pressed blue suit and recrossed her blue heels. “When are you getting married and having children? You’re going to get too old—”

      “Momma,” I interjected, as soon as Cecilia pulled out of the drive. “Don’t miss the sunrise. It’s beautiful.” Momma, don’t you want to stay in the hospital five months instead of five days? Don’t you want the doctors to sew your mouth shut for the rest of your life?

      With both hands, I pressed my braids tight to my head. I could feel that blackness again, right on the periphery. I fought so hard against that blackness. It had plagued me since childhood. Sometimes it won, sometimes I won. I was definitely sliding into second place today.

      “Please, Isabelle! I know what you’re trying to do,” Momma argued. “You’re trying to change the subject and it won’t work. Drive by my bakery, Cecilia, immediately. I want to see the building one more time before you girls get in it and burn the whole thing down.” She shook her head, tsk-tsked her tongue. “I’ll be out of business before a week is up.”

      “You won’t be out of business, Momma,” Cecilia said, turning toward town. She always tried to appease Momma, as she’d tried to appease Parker for years. Cecilia had simpered and catered and smothered her own personality around him to meet his endless and unreasonable needs and wants. With Parker, she had recreated the same relationship she had with Momma. In turn, he had decimated her soul.

      There was no one else on the planet she did that for, as she is a tornado with feet.

      “Janie and Isabelle are going to take good care of the bakery, and when summer starts I’ll be there, too, while you recover.”

      Momma humphed in the front seat. “Humph! And what will Henry do without me?”

      “Henry will be fine,” we all three said.

      “And what about Grandma?” She patted her perfectly brushed hair. Twisted her pearl necklace.

      “Grandma will be fine,” we all three said.

      “The СКАЧАТЬ