Read Online Juno's Daughters by Lise Saffran - Free Book Online Page A

eyelids.
    â€œNot Gonzalo. But perhaps Adrian or Francisco,” said Dale sleepily, after Peg had mused aloud whether or not Chad would be good to play one of the lords. He had done an excellent job as Le Beau in As You Like It and had been lobbying since May for a role in The Tempest . Before leaving again that evening he had pulled Peg aside to say how sorry he was about the brownies and how much he wanted to be in the play.
    Peg had forgiven him. “They did have green toothpicks in them, after all,” she’d said. “Trinculo could have at least asked what that signified before he ate three of them.”
    Now, Peg pulled both of her legs into the oversize chair and rested her chin on her fist. “I wonder if he could handle Stephano.”
    Jenny was only half following the conversation.
    After putting Trinculo to bed she had waited on the porch with a glass of wine until Lilly and Miranda emerged from the woods. The girls arrived whispering and holding Trinculo’s dripping clothes away from their bodies. They were roughly the same slender shape, but Lilly was clearly Lilly from her lumpy dreads. They were almost to the house before they noticed Jenny on the porch. Lilly saw her and froze. Miranda took a step or two more and then she, too, stopped and stood still. It was almost comical, thought Jenny. Almost.
    â€œGet up here, Lilly. March.”
    Miranda reached for the wet clothes in Lilly’s hand. “I’ll put these by the fire.”
    Jenny glanced from Miranda back to her daughter. One leg of Lilly’s long underwear had ruched up to just below her knee, exposing a slice of sun-browned calf. The other disappeared into the fuzzy, ankle-high Ugg that had consumed a third of Lilly’s first paycheck. Pine needles clung to her sweatshirt. From the very way she held herself as she slunk up the stairs, Jenny could see that Lilly was wavering between launching some kind of offensive claim of her own innocence to seeking quick absolution through immediate and contrite capitulation.
    â€œThis may all seem like a big joke to you,” said Jenny softly. “But giving someone drugs without their consent is a violation. It can feel, to the person who got them, like an assault.”
    Lilly glanced up from the chair she had settled into with genuine shock. “I didn’t give him the brownies. I had gotten some for me and Miranda and he snatched them. All three.”
    â€œDid you tell him that they were hash brownies? Or did you allow him to eat them without telling?”
    From the look on Lilly’s face it was clear which of the two alternatives had occurred.
    â€œBut they did have green toothpicks in them,” protested Lilly weakly.
    â€œLilly.”
    â€œI’m sorry.” Lilly sounded on the verge of tears. Her eyes held genuine confusion. “I guess I was thinking because, well, he is a grown-up and all . . .”
    Jenny sighed and took a pull from her wine. There was Lilly in a nutshell. Confident she was old enough to seduce the guy but not mature enough to take responsibility for what might happen.
    â€œLilly, you’re going to be eighteen any day now. It’s time you started acting like a grown-up, too.”
    Lilly had taken a clump of matted locks in her hands and squeezed it thoughtfully. Then she had ducked her chin and looked at her mother with the mischievous half smile that males of all ages found so fetching. “I’ll try to make it up to him,” she had said.
    Jenny frowned at the memory, even as she looked at her older daughter now, who was curled up on the same sofa as Frankie and looking markedly unrepentant. Trinculo snored in the back room unmolested, but the rest of the snake tattoo, ragged and patchy, clung to the skin of Lilly’s throat.
    And then there was Frankie. After Lilly and Miranda had ditched her, Frankie had been more shy than usual. But whenever Jenny had thought to look for her she’d found