The girl looked at Lily, then at Annie, confused. “I didn’t know you guys were sisters.”
“Neither did we,” Lily said, and they both started laughing so hard they had to hold on to each other.
Teresa and I stood a little way back, watching them.
“She’s never done that,” Teresa said. “Sung in front of people like that. Not once. She used to cry before choir every week.”
“She was incredible.”
“She was.” Teresa wiped her eyes. “Beth. I know I don’t have the right to ask you anything.”
“Ask.”
“Can they still see each other? After this? I know it’s… I know it’s complicated. I know you might not want…”
I looked at the two girls. Michael’s daughters. One with my blond hair and his gap-toothed smile. One with his eyes and his chin.
“They’re sisters,” I said. “That’s not something either of us gets to undo.”
Teresa started crying again.
“I’m still angry,” I told her. “I want to be honest with you. I’m angry at him. I’m angry at Ruth. And I’m angry at you, a little. I don’t know if that’ll go away.”
“I know. I’d be angry too.”
“But I’m not going to let my anger make my daughter lose a sister. She’s lost enough.”
Teresa nodded. She couldn’t talk.
“Have you two eaten?” I asked.
“Not since lunch.”
“There’s a diner on Fifth Street that’s open late,” I said. “Michael’s favorite. They make really good pancakes.”
Teresa looked at me for a long moment. Then she laughed, a small surprised laugh.
“Annie loves pancakes,” she said.
“So did he,” I said.
That’s how it started.
Pancakes at eleven o’clock at night, at a diner on Fifth Street, with two sixteen-year-old girls arguing over the last strip of bacon and two tired women sitting across from each other in a booth, not quite sure what to say.
We didn’t fix anything that night. You don’t fix seventeen years in one dinner.
But we started.
It’s been almost a year now.
Annie comes over on Sundays. Sometimes Teresa comes too, when she’s not working. The first few times were awkward. Long silences. Teresa apologizing for things. Me not knowing what to say back. But slowly, it got easier. Last month, she brought a lasagna and stayed until ten, and we drank cheap wine and talked about Michael. The good parts and the bad parts. We laughed about how he could never fold a fitted sheet. We cried about the ice cream once a year.
“He used to get her mint chocolate chip,” Teresa said. “Every time. Even though she told him every year that she hated mint.”
“He did that to me too,” I said. “With coffee. He always got me the hazelnut. I told him a thousand times I didn’t like hazelnut.”
We looked at each other and laughed until we cried.
That’s the strange thing about grief. You think it’s something that belongs only to you. Then you find out someone else has been carrying the other half of it for years, alone, in the dark.
We visited Ruth together in the spring. All four of us.
I wasn’t sure about it. I was still angry at her. I think I always will be, a little. But Lily insisted. She said Annie deserved to meet her grandmother, even if her grandmother didn’t deserve it.
Ruth cried the second Annie walked into the sunroom. She just put her hand over her mouth and cried.
“You look just like him,” she said.
“Everybody says that,” Annie said.
Ruth held out her hands. Annie hesitated. Then she took them.
Before we left, Ruth gave Annie the old button tin. The one Lily and I had used to fix the dress.
“Your sister’s been using this for years,” Ruth said. “I think it’s time it went to both of you.”
The money was the last thing we figured out.
Teresa wouldn’t keep it. Lily wouldn’t take it back. They argued about it for weeks.
Finally, Annie solved it.
