Page 33 of The Glass Girl

Laurel has this friend, Agnes, who lives outside Tucson in a place called Tubac on an old former cattle ranch with a bunch of other older women artists. Some of them are still making art, some don’t anymore, but I guess when they were all younger they made a pact that when they got too old, or too lonely, they’d buy a place together and live out their days. It’s a shabby rose-colored hacienda with a lot of bedrooms and bathrooms and tons of couches and hammocks and a hot tub outside and a chicken coop. They retrofitted the old barn as an art studio, and every Thanksgiving and Christmas, they invite loads of people and there are these funky old musicians with long gray hair and tie-dyed T-shirts who play all sorts ofinteresting instruments in the studio after the potluck meal. Zithers, bongos, guitars, bells, gongs, anything you can think of, really. That’s where we always go for Thanksgiving. It feels warm and homey and nice. I love it out there. I think it’s so nice these women decided to take care of each other.

“I wish I wasn’t missing it,” I say.

My mom is quiet for a second. Then she says, “It’s important for your dad to make his own traditions with you.”

“I guess,” I say. I clear my throat, hoping she doesn’t notice that my voice kind of broke.

“Does he have anything special in the works?”

I think of Vanessa on the couch with her cookbook, planning a meal, and I decide not to mention that. The fact that Vanessa is a thing upsets her. When my mom picked us up from Dad’s a couple of months ago and asked how our week was, Ricci shouted, “Good! I made cookies with Vanessa and we played Go Fish,” my mom’s face fell, like all the blood had literally drained from it.

“Who?” she said to Ricci, glancing in the rearview mirror, her voice really faint.

I turned around in my seat to motion to Ricci to shut up, but she was busy with her tablet and not looking at me. “Dad’s friend,” she said. “Vanessa.”

My mother stared straight ahead through the windshield, not speaking.

“Mom?” I said softly.

“A girlfriend,” she murmured. It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. Her hands dropped from the steering wheel to her lap. She’d been about to start the car.

“Mom.”

She was kind of scaring me, the way her voice was so flatand so…hurt. The way she was sitting so still, her hands placed flat on her jeaned thighs.

She wasn’t even blinking, her body had gone so still.

“I’m right, aren’t I.” Her voice sounded ghostlike and eerie.

In that moment, I felt a thousand things: I hated my dad for not telling my mother. I hated my dad for finding a girlfriend, like my mother was easily replaceable. And I hated my dad because the realization was slowly coming to me, in that car, the sounds of the cows on Ricci’s game moo-mooing in the back seat, that he never planned to tell her. He was going to leave it to us, like this. Like it was an accident. A blip.

Yet another example ofBella, do it.

“I’m sorry.” That was all I could think to say.

I knitted my fingers together in my lap, hard enough to make my bones ache. I waited for my mom to erupt. She could yell loud when she was really angry. I know, because of her fights with Dad and sometimes when she reaches her limit with me.

But my mom didn’t erupt. She didn’t yell, or scream, or go up and pound on my dad’s apartment door or grab her phone and start mad-texting.

She just sat in her seat, her hands white and flat in her lap, as big tears splashed down onto her cheeks, not making a sound, until finally Ricci looked up and said, “Why aren’t we going?” and our mom didn’t even wipe her face; she just put the key in the ignition and started driving, her wet face shining in the late-afternoon sun through the windshield.

“I don’t know,” I say now on the phone, finally. “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

“You sure you’re okay?”

“Yep,” I say, trying to make my voice sound bright. I put thephone on speaker and lay it on the kitchen counter. The pizza is bubbling golden brown in the oven, so I turn off the heat and pull it out, setting it on the counter on the cutting board.

Mom sighs. “Okay, then. Want to put Ricci on?”

I call for Ricci, who runs in and grabs the phone.

I turn the peas off and find the pizza cutter. Get a cup for Ricci’s milk.

That’s when I see it, on the top shelf, third one up, tucked behind the wineglasses my dad insisted on taking in the divorce, even though he doesn’t drink wine.

A bottle of rum, the kind with the sexy pirate on the label.

I freeze, Ricci’s chatter behind me splintering into bits.

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