When the first day went by and Jack didn’t call, I chalked it up to him being a bigshot businessman with not a lot of time on his hands. That night, I took a warm bath and read in bed until I passed out. After two days, I figured he had some catching up at work to do because of our botched meeting and picnic. That evening, I paced around my tiny apartment, replaying every conversation we’d had on a constant loop in my brain. Roza came over with soup and her knitting and sat with me until my feet got sore.

After an entire Goddamn week went by, I knew he was a rotten bastard who enjoyed playing with women’s hearts. That night, Riley came over and I cried into a carton of rocky road while she comforted me. Even she thought a week was ridiculous.

Like Mom always said, “It never rained, but it poured.” And apparently men and rain were synonymous because Gabe continued to text me and show up where I least expected him. His messages were getting progressively harsher. And in between the mean ones, he begged me to “try again”. I never answered back, but he was definitely starting to creep me out. I blocked each new number that he called and texted from, but that didn’t stop him.

So, when my mom called and invited me over for “family supper,” I was more than ready for some comfort food.

I grew up in an unassuming part of Santa Lena. If you ever wondered why there were so many cities in California that started with “Santa” or “San,” it was because those both meant “saint” in Spanish. Quite a few cities were founded by missionaries and named after saints.

Anyway, my parents lived in Summerfield Park right there on Sunny Oak Drive. The surrounding houses were mostly filled with young families back then. But since, all of us had grown up and flown the coop. A good majority of the older parents chose to stick around in their now mortgage-free, kid-less homes. A few more adventurous souls had retired to warmer climates, but most stayed.

My parents’ house was a blue and white split-level with detached double garage, the double garage an add-on after Charlie and I left. Before it was a garage, it was a huge sandbox with a rusty blue and white swing set in it. I couldn’t even tell you how many hours we spent playing in that sandbox, making all kinds of mud pies. Mom and Dad never complained about us getting filthy. They thought it was great and applauded each and every weird thing we made like it was some kind of masterpiece. The swing set was the old type where the legs would lift off the ground if you went too high, which we always did and drove Mom crazy. Ah, the good old days of dangerous children’s toys. Charlie and I cried when Mom and Dad told us they were getting rid of our play area, even though we hadn’t played in it for years. All the neighborhood kids coveted it, and everyone was always welcome. It seemed like a sacrilege to pave over top.

I pulled up in front of my childhood home and saw that Charlie and Pete were already there. You couldn’t find two sisters who looked less alike than we did. When we were younger, I would always tease her that she was the milkman’s kid because there wasn’t anyone in our family who had red hair, even though our grandma did. She never took kindly to this remark, and it inevitably resulted in name-calling, then a wrestling match, which I usually won because I was three years older and considerably feistier.

Walking up the driveway, I gave my best death glare to the garage. I could already smell the BBQ, and Dad and Pete’s voices carried easily from the backyard. As I walked around the corner, I saw them both standing by the smoking grill. Mmm, smelled like steak to me.

“If there’s no tinfoil potatoes on there, I’m going to cry,” I announced as I walked up to them. This was true. I’d never met a potato I didn’t like, but there was just something about whole potatoes wrapped in tinfoil and baked on the grill. Simple perfection.

“I see your potatoes and raise you corn on the cob,” Dad said, smiling ear to ear with BBQ tongs in one hand and his arms out wide, waiting. I walked into his arms and gave him a big squeeze.

“Don’t joke about corn if you don’t have it,” I said, hopeful, looking into his light blue eyes. My dad was fairly short, around five foot seven, and slim. A few years ago, he took to getting what was left of his gray hair shaved within a quarter inch of its life.

“We’ve got corn on the cob, Harper,” Pete replied behind me, so I turned quickly and gave him a hug. Pete was a successful computer IT guy. I honestly had no bloody clue what he did all day, even though he tried to explain it dozens of times. All I did know was that he could fix my laptop in no time flat whenever it went on the blink. Charlie married well. Pete was a good-looking guy, medium height and build with dark brown hair and a bit of a paunch starting. Those two were so much in love it was sickening. So, if he let himself go a bit, Charlie wouldn’t say diddly about it.

“Glad to hear it, Pete. How was your week?” I asked, but I knew even before I said anything that his answer might as well have been in Chinese. However, I was always polite and attempted to ask as many questions about his work as I could stand.

Luckily, Mom came out to rescue me from hearing the benefits of VPNs—whatever that was.

“Come here, you look so good. I missed you,” she said, standing on the back steps, waiting for me. She was wearing a long white skirt with big dark blue flowers on it and a dark blue short-sleeved blouse that matched. It didn’t matter that I saw them two weeks ago. It was a long time in Mom World, so I walked up the steps and gave her a hug. She always smelled like roses to me, and I inhaled deeply. “Come in, come in. Your sister’s inside. We can visit while the men do all the work.”

We both knew this was a lie. Mom was in charge of the kitchen, and nobody did a thing in it if she wasn’t there to boss and supervise. I mean, what if you used the wrong pot or pan to make something? Inconceivable. I also knew I’d find a spread once I walked in there that likely took days of preparation. Oh, and pickles and cheese. She always had one crystal platter with cheese and one filled with pickles. Mind you, nobody ever wanted pickles and cheese, but because she took so much care and attention to put them out, you felt obliged to take a handful of each just so she wouldn’t be disappointed.

Two steps in the door, my suspicions were confirmed. The entire dining room table was bursting with salads and fixings. As usual, there was enough food for forty people, instead of five.

“Wow, everything looks great, Mom. This must’ve taken you forever,” I said while staring at the multitudes of food and wondering how many plastic containers she would try to force us to take home at the end of the night. Mom always worried that I was eating crap food, and well, I pretty much was. I never bothered to mention that if she’d taught me how to cook, I would. Charlie was a marginal cook at best.

“It’s nothing, and your father helped.” Which meant he pushed the shopping cart and carried most of the bags inside.

My parents’ house had never been redecorated, so it looked like a bit of a time capsule from our childhood. The same tacky palm tree wallpaper covered the kitchen walls and the even tackier self-stick mirrors lined an entire wall in the dining room. Her brass hanging fruit baskets still hung by the kitchen window. There was something comforting about coming home to a place that never changed.

“Hi, Harper.” I spotted my baby sister sitting at the table, head leaning on one hand that you couldn’t see because her beautiful red hair was cascading over it. Charlie’s hair was often wavy, like it was now. She liked to put it up in a braid in the evenings after a shower, and by morning she had soft, silky waves. Immediately, I noticed something off about her. It looked like she was about to take a nap and the table was the only thing holding her upright. Her skin was always pale, but today she seemed almost gray. Hmm, maybe she overindulged last night? That’s not like her, but you never knew.

“Hi, baby sis. You tired today?” I asked and touched her soft hair. She sat up right away and ran her fingers through her hair.

“Oh, do I look tired? Yeah, I suppose I am.” She frowned and put her head back on her hand and leaned on her elbow.

“It looks like you are trying to become one with the table, that’s all, honey. Late night?” I said, then realized I shouldn’t have called attention to her misdeeds in front of Mom.

“Yeah, baby. You do look a bit under the weather.” Oops, now Mom was concerned.

“I’m just tired, you guys. No big deal,” Charlie said, looking around the room, avoiding eye contact.

Odd behavior, even for my sister, but I decided to let it go rather than make her more uncomfortable. If she didn’t want to tell us what she got up to last night, far be it from me to drag it out of her, but I would tease her about it later when Mom wasn’t around.

“Here, sweetie, eat something. That might help.” Mom shoved a small plate with a warmed-up sausage roll on it in front of Charlie. I could smell the spicy goodness from here. It had to be from Frank’s Deli. He made the best sausage rolls in town.

“Oh God, no,” Charlie said and pushed the plate away so hard it nearly fell off the table. Good grief, she must have had a few too many last night or she was coming down with the stomach flu.

Trying to save the day, I attempted to cover for her and eat the sausage roll. Mom would have a fit if her efforts went to waste. “Oh yum, is this from Frank’s? God, he makes the best sausage rolls. I’ve been meaning to pick up some beef jerky, but I just haven’t had the time,” I said through a mouthful of delicious, warm, spicy sausage and pastry. Heaven.

“Of course, it’s from Frank’s. I’ll get your father to pick up some jerky for you the next time he’s there, which is practically every other day.” Mom shook her head and wandered off to pull out even more food from the fridge.

Once she left, I eyed my sister suspiciously. “Rough night?” I smirked and waggled my eyebrows at her in a suggestive manner. Teasing my sister was one of the biggest joys I had in life. Tormenting her and watching her suffer was just so darn satisfying.

I didn’t get a response, other than an exaggerated eyeroll. Oh well, I’d try again later.

The men came in with plates stacked a mile high with every kind of meat known to mankind—sausages, brats, hotdogs, and of course, steaks. The mouthwatering aromas from the meats wafted throughout the kitchen, and I couldn’t wait to dig in. I hadn’t eaten much the last couple of days because of my nerves, and then my hangover, so I was good and ready to jump on anything that wasn’t moving.

“Oh no,” Charlie managed to mutter before she leapt from the table with one hand over her mouth and the other on her stomach. Uh-oh. Looked like more than a late night or a hangover. Now I felt like crap for teasing her.

“Oh no, she must have the flu,” Mom said, eyes wide and one hand covering her mouth in sympathy nausea.

“She doesn’t have the flu.” Pete sighed with a worried look on his face. He followed his wife down the stairs to the lower level bathroom.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” Mom chanted, eyes tearing up. Everyone knew you couldn’t cry around me. If you cried, I cried. So there I was, tearing up for some unknown reason in reaction to my mom who started it. Gah, I just prayed that she didn’t go on a full-blown sob-fest, because I’d be right behind her.

Attempting to grab a hold of myself, I examined the orange and brown macramé owl on the kitchen wall that I made in fourth grade. I was clearly gifted even then.

A minute later, Charlie walked up the stairs like a prisoner going to her doom. She veered to the left and marched out the front door. My mom bolted after her like it was ten percent off Tuesday at the local grocers. I followed like a clueless idiot as Pete came walking up the stairs. He gave me a shrug, but that’s about it. Men.

The crazy caravan ended up in the backyard where Charlie sat on one of the patio chairs. A few years ago, Mom made Dad chuck our old, uncomfortable woven-seat aluminum chairs, and then they splurged on a nice wooden set with comfy orange cushions. It was fifty percent off—I’m guessing because of the orange cushions—but you couldn’t deny the quality.

Poor Charlie sat with her feet up, hugging her legs, looking a rather sorry sight.

“What’s up, Charlie?” I asked, and it seemed like a rather ridiculous question after what had just happened.

She looked up at us with watery eyes and said, “I’m pregnant.”

“Whoo-hoo! I knew it.” Mom’s arms pumped in the air like she’d just won an Olympic event. “My baby’s having a baby!” she hollered. And that’s when the waterworks really started. Well, I only heard their sniffling due to my temporary blindness caused by a waterfall of tears.

Unable to speak or see, I somehow stumbled over to a now standing Charlie and joined their group hug. We cried and sobbed and sobbed and cried like emotional fools.

“Congrats, kid. I’m so happy for you guys.” I composed myself enough to say. “I’m going to be an auntie, yay,” I said softly and smiled down at her. She looked so tiny and vulnerable and scared.

Mom was the first to break the hug, proclaiming she had calls to make. I bet she did. Nothing in this world would give her more pleasure than informing their entire address book of her impending grandmotherhood.

Charlie sat back down, apparently in no hurry to return to the house, so I sat, too.

“I can’t stand the smell of food, let alone meat. Cooked. Uncooked. It doesn’t matter. It all makes me barf. I’m so fucking sick, Harper, I don’t know what I’m going to do for the next seven months. And FYI, morning sickness is not reserved for the mornings only. Oh, no, I’m sick twenty-four seven. I can’t even walk into the grocery store anymore. Pete has to do all of the shopping, so you know he’s just buying garbage,” she ranted on and on, but the only thing I could focus on was seeing her holding a little perfect bundle in seven months. And the tears started again.

“You’re growing a tiny human. I can’t even believe how exciting that is. I mean, I didn’t even think you guys were trying, and now there’s a baby. This is so crazy. You are going to be a mom. A mom.” My eyes still leaked, but at a slower rate.

“Well, it took us a while actually. I thought it would just magically happen the second I came off of birth control. We’d been trying for a year, and it was getting a bit tense.” Her eyes began to water.

“A year and you didn’t tell me?” I questioned her, unable to believe she would keep that from me for so long.

“You were fresh off of your divorce, sweetie, and we didn’t want to make things harder for you. We figured if it happened, it happened, and we’d let you know. And there was no way in hell I was telling Mom. Could you imagine all the phone calls I would have gotten the last year checking up on me every second? No way. I didn’t want that kind of pressure.” She leaned forward and put her hand on my knee. “And we did try to spare your feelings. I didn’t want to upset you. We didn’t want to upset you. You had been through so much as it was.”

“Don’t let that bonehead, or any other bonehead ever come between us again, okay? We aren’t in competition here. I love you and Pete, and that doesn’t change no matter what. I can be sad for me because I chose to marry a complete ass and be over the moon excited for you. It’s not one or the other. Don’t keep stuff from me to spare my feelings. If you keep stuff from me because you and Pete decide it’s best, that’s fine. I can more than respect that. But don’t you dare keep shit from me because of some ass,” I said, hoping to get my point across. She nodded at me and looked relieved, but still white as a ghost. Poor thing.

“Well, I’m starving. Maybe Aunt Debbie can bring over some surgical masks from the hospital, so you can sit at the table with the rest of us,” I teased her. She pushed me lightly from behind, and we both giggled. “You call me when you’re feeling sick. I don’t want to miss out on anything else.”

“You want me to call you from my bathroom? That’s gross, Harper.” She scowled at me.

“So call me right before or right after or even if you just feel like crap.” I tried to comfort her and offer my support.

“So basically, we’ll be on one long conference call,” she said sarcastically. But I couldn’t blame her. She must have been feeling like supreme crap because Charlie was anything but a whiner.

“Sure, honey. Sounds good to me,” I said and wrapped my arm around her.