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  “She’s been on a plane,” Christian said.

  “We were going to call the hotel,” I said.

  “Obviously,” Hope said, “she’ll want to come back and make sure you’re okay.”

  “Don’t you dare call that hotel!”

  I jumped at his tone.

  “Don’t get upset,” Christian said at once, looking uneasy.

  Dad blinked up from his hospital bed. “She’s been looking forward to this trip since she was a little girl,” he said, far more calmly. “There’s no way she’ll miss out on it on my account!”

  “Which is all well and good,” I said later that day.

  We had broken for naps, calls to our respective lives, and had regrouped at the kitchen table. Hope and Christian looked as bleary as I felt. Jeannie had been too wiped out to even attend this little summit meeting.

  “But he can’t take care of himself with that leg. He’s going to need help. This house is almost entirely made of stairs.” I looked from Christian to Hope.

  “Mom has to come home,” Christian said at once. “Right?”

  “Once-in-a-lifetime trip, yadda yadda yadda,” Hope said. “She’s not coming home.”

  “Her husband had a car accident.” Christian frowned at her. “Of course she’s coming home!”

  “You go right ahead and wait for her to appear in the arrivals hall at Newark Airport,” Hope suggested. “In fact, I’ll drive you. But it’s going to be a long wait.”

  “Dad was pretty adamant that he didn’t even want her told,” I agreed. “I think he’d flip out if anyone suggested she come home.”

  “I don’t understand this,” Christian said, still wound up. “If Jeannie was in a car accident, no one would have to suggest I come home! What the hell?” But he wound himself down even as he spoke, and sounded more resigned than anything else.

  “Whether or not Dad should tell Mom, or Mom should come home, or what either of those things says or doesn’t say about their marriage . . .” I shrugged. “I can’t deal with any of those things right now. Worst-case scenario is she doesn’t come home and we have to handle it, right?”

  “Someone already lives at home and can take care of him,” Christian pointed out. He looked at Hope. “Someone who doesn’t have a job.”

  Hope laughed. “Yeah, right.” She wasn’t at all moved by our two pairs of eyes upon her. “I can hardly take care of myself. Anyway, I don’t have time. I’m traveling.”

  “So far, ‘traveling’ looks an awful lot like bumming around the house, staying out all night, and sleeping all day.”

  Christian sounded more jealous than angry, I thought. Of course, he’d done the same when he graduated from college. In fact, I was the only one who had gone directly from graduation into the workforce, with no “finding my feet” time at Mom and Dad’s. Not that I planned to bring this up. I jerked my attention back to my sister.

  “What do you care, Dad?” Hope was sneering at Christian. “Did I ask you to comment on how I live my life?”

  “You don’t actually have a life,” Christian snapped. “You’re a post-graduation freeloader who can’t be bothered to get off her ass and get a goddamned job!”

  “Come on, Christian,” I murmured reprovingly.

  “I graduated all of five seconds ago!” Hope retorted. “Anyway, I’m saving up my money and going backpacking in Costa Rica. So back off.”

  Christian rolled his eyes and sighed. “You’re the best option, Hope,” he told her firmly. He stared at her, as if that would transmit his authority. “It’s not like you’d be on your own. We’d all be around, helping you out.”

  “Sure you would.” Hope laughed mirthlessly. “Meredith lives in Atlanta and you like to pretend Hoboken is in another galaxy instead of a half-hour down the Turnpike. Which adds up to Hope alone, waiting hand and foot on Dad. No way.”

  “Hope,” I said carefully. “Of course you feel that way, but it would be—”

  “Listen closely,” Hope interrupted coldly. “Maybe you want to ruin your summer playing nurse, but I don’t. I don’t want the responsibility, thank you very much.”

  And with that she knocked back her chair and stalked off into the night.

  “That selfish little bitch,” Christian said, but in a kind of awe. He was almost smiling.

  I sighed. “Oh come on. What did you think she was going to do?”

  We both shook our heads, and even laughed a little bit.

  Christian sat back and crossed his arms across his chest. “There’s no way I can take any time off. The partner track waits for no one. And Jeannie has her hands full with the wedding.”

  Jeannie was a tenth-grade teacher, which should have left her hands pretty empty from about 3 p.m. on, while Christian labored away in his Newark law firm. Not to mention the approaching summer vacation. I didn’t find it at all difficult to believe that Jeannie had thrown herself into their wedding preparations. The fact that Christian thought that was a reasonable excuse for avoiding family duties was something else altogether.

  “I’m sorry, Meredith,” Christian continued, although I didn’t think either one of us believed that he was really sorry.

  I already knew where this was going. What surprised me was how easily I accepted it as inevitable. I would do this because I was the responsible one. Wasn’t that the way it always worked out? But I just want to go home! a plaintive voice wailed in my head. I silenced it. It was more important to be the good daughter than to be happy.

  “I’ll speak to my boss,” I said, hearing what sounded—horrifyingly—like the trill of martyrdom in my voice. I tried to ignore it. “But I don’t really know what to tell her. Do we know how long his rehabilitation will take?”

  “The doctor said it’s about six weeks until he gets the heavy cast off his leg,” Christian said, poking at the table as if he could hurt it. Or maybe he was reacting to the martyr tone himself. “And then I think there’s a walking cast, and after that I guess he can take care of himself.”

  “I’ve been at Morrow almost five years, so I have some leeway, but taking off the rest of the summer?” I shrugged as if to say, Who knows?

  Christian blinked at me. “So you quit. Right? You don’t really care about that job.” He looked confused. “Since when was it your life’s dream to work in the alumnae association of a school you didn’t even attend?”

  “I’m not sure how thrilled I am at the idea of moving home,” I continued with only a sideways look his way, not up for a discussion of my life’s dreams with Christian just then. “Even just for the summer.”

  “It wouldn’t really be moving home,” Christian said hurriedly. He glanced around at the familiar kitchen walls. “That would be suicide. It would just be helping out the family, which is totally different.”

  For a brief moment I thought, What if my boss says no? What if I don’t want to help out? What if I’m not so dependable after all? What if I demanded that you take care of someone else for a change? What if I got up right now and stormed off out of the house like Hope?

  But that wasn’t me.

  And in any case, it wasn’t going to happen. Doomsday scenarios courtesy of Hope aside, what wife didn’t rush to her husband’s side the moment she heard he was in an accident? It was great that we had a plan B, but surely the fact we had it practically guaranteed we wouldn’t have to use it.

  “Obviously,” I said to Christian then, “none of this is going to matter anyway, because I’m sure Mom will be on the next plane home.”

  “Of course she will.” He sounded relieved I thought so too.

  “It’s just a question of telling her.” I rubbed at my eyes. “And of making Dad see reason.”

  “Here’s the thing,” Christian said in his “I am so reasonable” voice. He was playing Dad to Dad—a risky proposition at best. “I know that you want Mom to have a great time and that you don’t want her to come home, but we have to think about it from her perspective.”

  “Exactly!” I agreed hea
rtily, as planned and briefly rehearsed in the completely beige hospital lobby, with Hope playing a very surly version of Dad, perched on a bench next to a rumpled businessman who clearly believed we were both destined for the psych ward. Possibly because Hope’s version of Dad used a great deal more profanity.

  “How would you feel if the positions were reversed, Dad?” I asked. “You might very well choose to stay in Europe, but you’d definitely want to be the one to make that choice.”

  “Meredith makes a really good point there,” Christian chimed in. “Mom has to have all the facts, so she can make an informed decision.”

  “The real issue here is that you believe she’s going to come home,” Hope interjected, looking at Christian as if he amused her greatly.

  This part was not scripted. I turned to gauge Dad’s reaction. His leg was splayed out before him in the narrow bed, looking both small and bulky beneath the hospital gown. So far, he hadn’t said a word.

  “Hope—” Christian was trying to send a warning while remaining reasonable. It came out kind of strangled.

  “Christian,” she mimicked him. “If anyone cares what I think—”

  “No one does,” Christian assured her. With far less bite than he would have used if our father wasn’t in the room.

  “—I don’t think she’ll come home.” She shrugged at Christian’s glare. “I’m sorry, but I don’t.”

  “That’s not really the point,” I hurried to say. “The point is, she has to know.” Hoping to forestall any more sibling drama, I looked toward Dad. “Right? Dad?”

  “I appreciate how concerned you all are,” Dad said, sounding surprised at all the energy we’d put into the topic. “Of course we can tell your mother, but I can’t imagine she’ll come home, Christian. Why should she? I’m perfectly fine.”

  Which is exactly what he told her when we called her later that morning.

  And exactly what I told her when she demanded to speak to me and I assured her that I was delighted with my new role as primary caretaker.

  “It’s practically like being on vacation myself,” I assured her. Happily!

  “I’ll have to call the airline,” Mom said, my happy tone apparently unconvincing. “I can’t let you risk your job. And what will Travis do without you all summer?”

  “Mom, please! There’s no risk and Travis will be fine! Believe me, if there’s one thing people in the South understand, it’s having to put family first!”

  Speaking in exclamation points was actually exhausting, I discovered. I rubbed at the back of my neck.

  “I just don’t know what to do,” Mom said. “I’d hate to let your aunt Beth down, but if it’s truly not as bad as it sounds, I just don’t know. Do you really think it’s something you can handle?”

  She’d programmed me well. I practically fell over myself assuring her that not only could I handle it, I couldn’t wait to handle it! I wanted to handle it!

  “This is your time!” I chirped at her like some refugee from a theme park, ignoring Hope’s derisive snort from behind me.

  By the time we got off the phone, I had convinced the both of us that Dad had a hangnail and I was hanging out around the house as my summer vacation, nothing to worry about, enjoy the Louvre.

  “Congratulations,” Hope said as I replaced the receiver. “You’ve just become a Stepford Wife.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Christian said, in that through-his-teeth way he used to talk to Hope in front of Dad. I thought he should maybe either stop doing that, or see the dentist about jaw strain. “Meredith lives for things like this, don’t you, Meredith?”

  “Of course,” I said, beaming at Dad. As brightly as possible, to avoid looking at Hope’s smirk. “There’s nowhere I’d rather be.”

  Chapter 3

  It was depressingly easy to sort out a summer up north. My boss was incredibly understanding when I reached her and only too happy to grant me compassionate leave—but then, summer was always our dead time. She might have been far less supportive had it been closer to the end of the fiscal year.

  “I don’t understand why you have to move home,” Travis said yet again. I moved the phone from one ear to the other and stared at the kitchen sink. “The rest of your family lives right there.”

  “Whining is so unattractive.” I was striving for a light tone, which was hard, as it had just occurred to me that the dishes in the sink were my responsibility. “Anyway, it’s not moving home. It’s visiting, with a little nursing thrown in.”

  “I’m serious,” he said. “What am I going to do all summer without my girlfriend? Have you thought about that?”

  “I have the least important job,” I said, not for the first time. I waited for Travis to defend my job, but he didn’t. And why would he? I hadn’t mounted any defense myself. “Plus,” I said, “can you really see my brother nursing my father? Would you nurse your father?”

  “What about Hope?” Travis asked. But he knew better. “That’s just wrong,” he said when I only sighed. “You let that girl get away with murder.”

  “It’s a McKay tradition.”

  “We have about a hundred barbecues to go to,” Travis groused. “I hate doing that stuff on my own.”

  “You’ll be fine. You have all your friends to keep you company,” I reminded him. “Not that I trust them.”

  “They all love you,” he assured me. “They’d never let me do you wrong.”

  I shook my head. “Your friends are dogs!”

  “Our friends,” he corrected me. “And they’re perfectly well-behaved dogs, when the ladies are around.”

  “Exactly my point!”

  He sighed again. “I’ll send you some clothes and stuff,” he said finally. And then, teasing me: “And I’ll try to keep the apartment exactly the way you left it.”

  We both knew the place would be a mess of his laundry, his meals, his lack of interest in housework of any kind, and maybe already was. I decided not to think about my beautiful apartment left in his careless hands, because that might make me cry. And I was determined not to cry. I was just taking care of my father for a few weeks. I wasn’t being sucked into the vortex of my past. I wasn’t trapped in my childhood home.

  “I’ll call you,” I promised.

  “You better,” Travis retorted. “I don’t know how you can stand to miss out on the traditional Sweat-lanta summer,” he drawled. He was a local boy, born and raised with parents in Buckhead and that lovely drawl. He said it “Sweatlanna.”

  “It’s not much better in New Jersey,” I pointed out. “The humidity is already disgusting.”

  “Baby,” he said patiently, “New Jersey is the armpit of the nation. What do you expect?”

  I ignored the slur on my home state with the ease of long years’ practice. Highway jokes, exit sign cracks, “armpit of the nation,” The Sopranos, and the side-splitting irony of calling the place the “Garden State.” No one ever came up with a new one.

  “I’ll be home soon,” I promised him. Maybe with more ferocity than it warranted.

  Home meant the comfortable ease of our life together: the friends we saw several nights a week, the parties and celebrations. The routine of our life as a couple. The simple pleasure of the two of us on the couch at the end of the day, so comfortable we didn’t need to talk to each other. It was all about being on the same page. We wanted the same things. We liked the same people. We’d built the perfect life for ourselves with all those things we shared.

  This place I’d grown up in wasn’t real to me anymore, not the way Atlanta was. I was just a visitor here, pretending to belong to the people around me. But I didn’t belong. It wasn’t home any longer.

  The first few days as nursemaid were a blur of visiting the hospital and preparing the house for a mostly immobile invalid. Christian and I made up the family room so Dad could get up and get downstairs—with help, of course—and have a place to watch television, snooze, and not have to be in his bed. Which worked better in theory than in practice
.

  The first day he was home, my father was too groggy to do much.

  The second day, however, he was impossible.

  Christian had taken off work to help with the transition, and by the time night rolled around and we’d put Dad to bed, the two of us were ready to leave him there.

  For good.

  “If he asks me one more time about those stupid fish, I’m killing him,” Christian moaned, slumped against the kitchen counter.

  “I don’t think he was kidding.” I shook my head. “I think he really does have a flowchart somewhere. Possibly several.”

  “If he hands you a flowchart, or even something that just looks like a flowchart, you have my permission to leave him upstairs. Permanently.”

  “Do you think he just made up the flowchart for fun one day?” I mused. “Or do you think he was anticipating the possibility that he might be incapacitated and someone else would have to feed the fish? Do you think the flowchart—”

  “If you say the word ‘flowchart’ one more time,” Christian informed me, his eyes narrow, “I’m killing both of you.”

  When I woke up on Saturday morning, it was like I was back in high school. I shuffled down the carpeted stairs to find Jeannie in the kitchen, slamming in and out of the refrigerator with unnecessary force and malice. As if the refrigerator had been getting smart with her and she had to teach it who was boss.

  She had never been a morning person, I remembered with a smile. My mother had chirped—repeatedly—that “anyone can be a morning person if they put their mind to it, girls,” but Jeannie had been evidence that some people just couldn’t crack a smile before noon. Or before consuming seven large cups of coffee, whichever came first.

  Jeannie was putting together a breakfast tray. Her hair was pulled back into a tight ponytail, and she was wearing the glasses she normally pretended not to own. She was also wearing the same patented scowl of outrage at being awake that I recalled from the entirety of our childhood, when she’d been the unofficial fourth McKay. Now my brother’s ring sparkled on her finger, which I guess made it official.