Louise cradled the egg in her hands. Every Wednesday night their mother would sift through the contents of their refrigerator, sniffing at the suspicious packages, throwing out anything that looked too old. How much time did the unused eggs have left?
Jillian squeaked with alarm and made a wild grab at the egg that had slipped out of her hand. She missed, and it dropped to the floor with a wet splat. Her lip trembled as she fought not to cry.
“Maybe we should ask Mom and Dad to make us baby sisters.”
The most important lesson Louise learned a week before her ninth birthday was the hardest one to keep in mind. Sometimes what sounded like a good plan wasn’t.
2: The Best-Laid Plans
Their parents had insisted on calling the building in the backyard the girls’ “playhouse” despite the fact it was actually a storage shed. Made of dried lumber and asphalt shingles, it had proved to be quite flammable. All that was left was a skeleton of blackened studs. Their father was dismantling it with a reciprocating saw.
“We want to know more,” Jillian called to him over the growl of the blade.
“More?” their father echoed. He had soot smeared across his pale cheeks like war paint. On another father, it would probably look cool, but it only made him look silly. The strap on his safety glasses worked his straw-blond hair into spikes, standing up at every conceivable angle. His eyebrows were cocked into an extremely puzzled look. Their mother liked to use his expressions as proof that it was possible to get your face stuck in silly-looking poses. He looked like a startled hedgehog.
“We want to know about our siblings,” Louise said.
“Your what?” His mystified look changed to slight panic. He narrowly avoided cutting his left hand with the saw blade and had to turn off the power tool for his own safety.
“Our sisters!” Jillian cried, still at the volume to be heard over the now silent saw.
“And our brother.” Odds were that at least one of their siblings would a boy. “We read up on in vitro fertilization. We know that we probably have two or three siblings, if not more.”
“We could have dozens!” Jillian cried.
Their father was shaking his head while trying to wave off their questions. “No. No. What are you doing back here? It’s dangerous. Go back in the house. You could have been killed in this shed. You were lucky that you weren’t trapped in here.”
They hadn’t been because they’d used an old coffee table as a blast shield. They had stood it on end, its legs against the double doors that opened outward. The explosion had smashed the table through the doorway. They were lucky that the thick legs kept them from being squashed between the two pieces of heavy wood. So far, no one had realized the significance of the heavily charred coffee table out in the middle of the yard.
“Daddy!” Jillian used the ultimate cute attack. “If you had a brother or a sister, wouldn’t you want to know?”
Their father melted visibly but remained steadfast. “Yes, I would. I always wanted a brother or sister. But those records are kept confidential. They’re secret.”
“Why?” Jillian was actually asking why he’d let anything like policy stand in his way. Since he worked at the clinic, it should be easy for him to get the information.
He misunderstood. “It’s for our protection. This way, no one can come and. . and. .”
“And?”
“Get visitation rights for you.”
They understood custody battles; several of their classmates had had their lives implode via a divorce. Their situation didn’t seem to fit that scenario.
“Why would anyone do that?” Louise asked.
“You and Mom aren’t getting divorced, are you?” Jillian asked and did a lip quiver that may or may not have been real.
“No. No. Your mother and I are happy. It’s just when people can’t have other children, or they have children and lose them in some way, they’re desperate enough to use the law to take what really isn’t theirs in the first place.”
Louise exchanged a glance with Jillian. They hadn’t considered “other parents,” only “other siblings.” “And the law would actually allow that?”
“Yes, honey. The law tries to be fair to everyone, but in trying to cover all the bases, it ends up being grossly unfair to some people. It is possible, even though your mother carried you for nine months and you’ve been our daughters for nine years, that the court may think the little bit of genetic material we. . we used is enough to warrant someone else rights to you.”
The truly frightening thing was that their father always sugarcoated everything. Somehow he never understood that they were constantly growing up; in his mind they were stuck somewhere between the ages of three and four. That he was admitting this much meant there was much more that he wasn’t telling them.
Their mother was in full African warrior-queen mode in the laundry room, dealing with her smoke-laden cardigan while she growled at someone on her headset.
“The only exploding car in my backyard is a Barbie Glam Convertible.” She shoved the cardigan deeper into the wash water as if thinking about holding someone’s head under the suds. It made Louise edge slightly back. Now probably wasn’t the best time to talk to their mother.
“I do think that while the demonstrations against the E.I.A. zone expansion are going on that checking for car bombs at the dinner is perfectly reasonable. Anna Desmarais is a complete loon, though, if she thinks my nine-year-olds are terrorists. You tell Taliaferro that if she goes after my girls, I will come down there and set her—” Their mother noticed them standing at the door and winced. “Short hairs on fire.”
With a flick of the wrist and a jangle of gold bracelets, she tried to banish them away so she could use real harsh language. They edged back so that they weren’t in the room proper but they could still see her rinsing out her cardigan.
She knew that they were still in earshot; she gave a long angry hiss instead of swearing. “She is not a nice little old lady, she is a hedge-fund manager and one of the best. She’s a shark; if she smiled a little wider, you’d see how sharp her teeth are. Oh, she hates me just as much as I hate her; we’re just both very good at smiling and pretending that everything is just peachy.”
Their mother worked in events planning for charities. In some ways, it was a glamorous job as it involved throwing bright and glittering parties for the city’s richest. It meant, however, that their mother was constantly faced with drop-dead deadlines and unexpected emergencies. She was quite good at it since, as an African warrior queen, she was forceful and unbending while extremely polite.
“Jillian needed three stitches.” Their mother sniffed the cardigan to see if she had gotten out the smell of smoke from the fine wool. “Louise had half of her hair burnt off. Other than that, they only have minor scrapes and bruises from head to toe. They spent the night at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital.” She paused as the other side asked a question that made her glare at them in the doorway. “It was a dust explosion! Look it up; I had to.” She huffed with impatience. “Flour, when airborne in high concentrations, can explode. Flour. The white stuff in cookies and cakes. Tell Taliaferro to tell Desmarais that the fire department already has ruled it was an accident.” Another huff of impatience. “My girls videoed the whole thing, and the footage cleared them of everything but stupidity. Yes, the joy of raising children. Said children want their mother, I have to go.”
She laid her sweater on the drying rack and pulled off her gloves. Their mother held up her elegant hand as if giving benediction. “I love you two dearly,” she said calmly. “I would kill anyone that tried to harm you. I would lay down my life to protect you. But — this — is — not — a good time to push me.”