Because if it didn’t, if she couldn’t fix what was broken, Francine knew exactly what would happen. She’d slink back to San Francisco and find someone safe, someone she’d love out of pure will because waiting for the right person was too risky. She’d settle, and wilt, and in quiet but important ways, die, living the rest of her days as someone she didn’t recognize.
A shiver of activity pulled her attention from the domestic bliss on the stoop to the center of the patio where Pixie Cut was threading the narrow gaps of the motionless party. A flicker of light came from the star pendant necklace on the woman’s chest as it repeatedly caught and lost the porch light. Maybe what Francine had initially read as hostility in the woman’s face was just frustration at her husband, in which case she and Francine would have plenty to talk about.
Francine wiped a sweaty hand on her equally sweaty sundress as she prepared to meet the umpteenth neighbor of the night.
“Cheers, Hawthorn Woods!” Ellie and Pete said, in unison.
They raised their glasses in a toast as Pixie Cut reached the edge of the patio and threw her entire cocktail into Francine’s face.
Chapter 2
In most marriages, one or both partners are unhappy.
[ x ] TRUE [ ] FALSE
Shuffling sleepily into the kitchen, Francine plucked a note from the busy assortment of coupons on the fridge.
Hiya!
Left early for O’Hare to get a jump on traffic.
Don’t know what the hell happened last night—SO weird, but please don’t let it trip you up. Hawthorn Woods is a good place, and it will be good for you, I know it.
We’ll call when we’re by a phone, but we’ll be on the move a lot, too—lots to see! O-rah-vwa! (spelling?!)
Love love love,
Ellie (+ Pete)
Sleeping in hadn’t been a great way to start what were supposed to be—what had to be—the most productive two weeks of her life, but between a few too many nerve-calming beers and the cranberry vodka facial, Francine wasn’t about to give herself too much grief.
She focused instead on a much more pressing problem: finding coffee, and fast. In your twenties, hangovers were annoying. At thirty-five, they were a life and death medical condition, and caffeine was an important part of the cure.
Her bare feet padded across the linoleum floor, its pattern of blue cornflowers worn away in the high-traffic areas of fridge and sink. She dug around the back of the pantry until her fingers found the ribbed tin of a Folgers can, which she extracted with religious reverence. Waiting for the Mr. Coffee machine to brew, she had time to take in all the sentimental accents of her sister’s cozy kitchen. Spine-wrinkled cookbooks earmarked with sticky notes. Wooden countertops edge-rounded from a thousand instances of human touch. A flower-bordered cross-stitch that read, ‘Home Sweat Home,’ the sewn-in typo now a running joke.
Then Francine’s gaze found a small chalkboard stuck to the freezer door.
milk
peanut butter
I’m sorry
me too
good luck today!
love you
love you more
raisins
The mundane minutiae of a shopping list layered with apology and forgiveness was just one of many signs of Ellie and Pete’s still-breathing relationship, providing constant contrast to Francine’s own failed attempt at love.
Now it seemed she might be failing in her attempt at recovery too, given the events of the previous night.
The cheer building at the end of Pete’s speech had strangled awkwardly, save for a woman on the other side of the patio who had been oblivious to the drink throw, and continued to clap loudly.
Francine had stood there, dripping, not understanding what had just happened.
She’d never met the woman with the pixie cut before. Hadn’t met her husband either. Hadn’t done anything to anyone that night except shake hands and smile.
The voice that cut the silence had been loud and diet-Southern.
“Excuse you, Magdalena!” Laura Jean had thundered. “You apologize right this minute!”
Pixie Cut had muttered something in Russian and stormed off into the night, leaving her excessively muscled husband to stumble through an apology to Francine before hurrying after his wife.
And while the cranberry vodka had washed off easily enough (and tasted pretty good, to be honest), the effect had definitely lingered. Lovers quarreled and siblings squabbled, but such a random, ugly action from a complete stranger had left Francine disturbed. Neither Ellie nor Laura Jean had had anything bad to say about Magdalena beforehand. So, why?
Francine’s fragile belief that the future held anything good wavered.
“Aunt Francine?”
She jumped, feet actually leaving the ground, before she turned to find her seven-year-old nephew sitting at the kitchen table behind a box of Lucky Charms.
“Charlie!” she gasped. “You scared the shit out of me.”
An awed smile crept onto the boy’s face.
“Shit, I shouldn’t have said that. Or that,” she quickly added. “Don’t tell your mom, okay?”
He pretended to zip his still-smiling mouth.
Francine poured the available coffee into a mug and joined him at the table, careful not to bang her head on the low-hanging Tiffany lamp.
Unlike her and Ellie, Francine and her nephew actually looked related, sharing dark blue eyes, a surplus of freckles, and copious amounts of messy brown hair.
“Are you hangovered?” Charlie asked, through a mouthful of Lucky Charms.
Francine snorted. “I’m hungover,” she corrected, and used the steaming mug of coffee to down twice the recommended amount of aspirin. “Did you say goodbye to your mom and dad this morning?”
Charlie nodded. “They said if I give you any trouble, it’s no allowance, no dessert, and no TV for the rest of the summer.”
“Yikes. Well, I’ve never taken care of a kid before, so how about this?” She held out a pinky. “You be cool for me, I’ll be cool for you. We’ll help each other out. That way, your parents will come home and find you in one piece, and we can have some fun along the way. Deal?”
Charlie hooked her pinky with his own. “Deal.” He spooned a final bite of cereal into his mouth and ran for the back door. “’Kay, bye!”
“Hey! Hold up, mister. What’s the agenda for the day?”
“What’s agenda mean?”
“It means, what are you going to do all day? And don’t give me any substitute teacher runaround. I’m sure you’re allowed to play with fireworks and smoke cigars, but just know, aunts have special powers that let them smell nephew lies a mile away.”
Charlie jittered with anticipation in the doorframe, an inch from total freedom. “I go out to play after breakfast, then I come back for lunch, then I leave again, then I come back when it’s dark.”
“Okay. I’ll make you a sandwich and leave it in the fridge in case I go for a walk or something. And it’s milk with lunch, not pop. Capeesh, Bubba?”
“What’s that mean?”
“I dunno. You’re just supposed to say capeesh back.”
“Capeesh.”
“Okay, just go before you explo––”