Page 29 of Borrow My Heart

“I’m sorry,” Zoey said.

Instantly I felt guilty. And I hated that I felt guilty. If I was allowed to be rude to anyone in my life, it was our mom. She left me. She left my sister. She could’ve left our dad without leaving all of us.

Mom married young, at nineteen, and had Zoey a year later, at twenty. She’d told me once that she married so young to get out of her parents’ house, away from the strict rules they felt the need to impose on her even though she was an adult. But with our dad, she still felt stifled. Like she hadn’t lived. Maybe he was too regimented for her, too boring. She was determined to have experiences. Every day was riddled with spontaneity. It worked okay when Zoey and I were really little, but once school started, and our mom didn’t feel the need to take us or would pull us out midday, she started feeling constrained again. And I started feeling like I had no control over my day. Like I never knew where or when something was going to happen. It was unsettling. I needed rules. I started making rules.And when she left, I started making more rules, rules about who I could trust. My rules saved me.

And one of those rules was thatIdecided when to see her, not the other way around.

“Are you going to see her?” I asked Zoey, who was staring at the kettle corn truck as if trying to decide if we needed another snack.

“Probably,” she said.

“I’m not.”

She peeled her eyes away from the popcorn. “I figured.”

We walked down the street for several quiet moments. “Gah. Where are the stupid seeds?”

“Maybe he moved on to the next town.”

We passed a crate of perfectly ripened tomatoes. “You really don’t remember?”

Zoey shook her head.

Maybe my memory was wrong. Maybe there were no magic beans. Maybe a lot of my memories were wrong.

“I’m sorry I made you talk to her,” my sister said because she hated it when people were upset with her. “I know it affects you more than me.”

“It doesn’t affect me at all. I’m fine.” Our mom was like a ripple of bad energy. First she soured my mood and now my mood was going to make my sister feel bad. “Let’s go find a gift for Dad.”

Rule:Never date a liar.

Dad, Zoey, and I sat at a small table in Olive Garden, like we did every year for his birthday. Zoey was doing the word search on the back of the kids’ menu with a red crayon; Dad was studying his options like he wasn’t going to get the same plate of lasagna he ordered every year; and I was checking out the post I’d made of Bean on the shelter’s Instagram to see whether anyone had commented.

There were twenty-three likes and only two comments. One just said:cute.The other said:isn’t this that mean dog from AdoptionDay?

The shelter held Adoption Day once a month at different places throughout the city. If people didn’t want to come to the shelter, we’d waive fees and bring the animals to them. Shopping at the farmers’ market? How about taking home a sad dog with that bag of avocados? Giving a pint of blood? Maybe now you have room in your heart for an aging cat! There weren’t many local events we didn’t try to worm our way into.

I narrowed my eyes at the second comment and deleted it with a jab of my finger.How’s that for mean.

“Dad,” Zoey said, moving a bag stuffed with tissue paper from the bench beside her to the table. “Happy birthday.”

“Oh, are we doing that now?” I plopped my gift on the tabletoo.

“Thanks, girls,” he said. “You didn’t have to.”

“Didn’t we, though?” Zoey said. “What kind of daughters would we be if we didn’t?”

“Broke,” I said. “The broke kind. Don’t expect too much.”

A talkative family walked by our table and was seated at a large one practically an arm’s length away. The waitress arrived in front of us with a smile. “You guys ready to order?” She noticed the gifts. “Is it someone’s birthday?”

“Yes, it’s our dad’s,” Zoey said.

“You should sing to him later,” I added.

“You really shouldn’t,” Dad said. “Please.”

“We won’t,” she said, then winked at me and Zoey, all but assuring us that she would, in fact, be singing to our dad later.

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