Read Online The Good Sister by Wendy Corsi Staub - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Wendy Corsi Staub
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screens—television, smart phones, e-readers, laptops . . . they don’t even call each other on the phone anymore so that they can hear each other’s voices; they just send text messages back and forth . . .
“I have to go do homework.” Carley is on the move, brushing past Jen, heading for the stairs.
“On a Friday afternoon?”
“Math test Monday.”
“Wait, Car, guess what? I made some peanut butter cook—”
“No, thanks.”
“But—”
“I’m not hungry.” Carley bounds up the steps. Seconds later, her bedroom door closes—not gently, but not hard, either.
Jen finds herself wishing her daughter would just slam the damned door. Good old-fashioned healthy adolescent anger—she’d welcome that any day over this . . . this preternatural calm.
Door slamming isn’t Carley’s style, though. She isn’t the household hothead by any stretch. That honor belongs to Emma—or perhaps to Jen herself.
Aside from her looks, Carley takes after Thad’s side of the family.
“In other words, she’s quiet and reasonable and sane,” Thad used to tease Jen whenever she mentioned the similarities between him and their firstborn.
“Hey! Are you accusing me of being loud and unreasonable and insane?”
“Absolutely,” he’d say, or he’d raise an eyebrow at her—just one—and the conversation would invariably end in a few more traded quips and grins.
Around here lately, though, lighthearted moments have become as scarce as . . . as . . .
As songs played on that piano, Jen thinks as she passes it on her way back to the kitchen. Back before the girls’ lessons got lost in the busy household shuffle, Emma complained constantly and could barely bang out a scale. But Carley seemed to have some actual talent.
Maybe she should get back into music, Jen muses, moving on down the hall. Maybe that will help somehow.
Back in the kitchen, she eyes the trays of cookies cooling on the breakfast bar.
Maybe those will help somehow.
Maybe something, somehow, will help.
You can’t just fix everything , Thad’s voice reminds her.
No? Watch me.
She grabs a rubber spatula, slides the edge under a cookie, and starts to move it from the still-hot baking sheet to a waiting plate. She’ll take a couple up to Carley’s room with a glass of milk and see if she wants to talk.
She won’t. But at least she’ll know I’m there for her if she needs me. At least she’ll know she’s not alone. And sooner or later, she’ll—
As she tilts the spatula, the cookie, still too hot, lands on the plate in an accordion heap of crumbly goo.
“Crap!”
Shaking her head, Jen tosses the spatula aside in frustration.
Once again, she was too impulsive. Once again, she forgot to think things through before she acted.
When , Jen asks herself, will you ever learn?
A quick visual inspection assures Carley that her lavender and white bedroom is just as she left it this morning before school: bed neatly made; books, binders, folders, and note cards stacked just so on her desk; closet door and dresser drawers slightly ajar—just slightly, so that it’ll be easier for her to tell whether anything is amiss.
Nothing is.
Good.
Now that Carley has moved on to high school, she has to catch a metro bus that departs half an hour before Emma leaves for Saint Paul’s. That’s a problem in a house without any locks on the interior doors. Sometimes her sister sneaks in after she’s gone and snoops around or borrows something. Usually not clothes, of course—Emma is one of those petite girls who will never be more than a size two, while Carley, already a twelve, is the same size as Mom.
Too bad that doesn’t keep Emma from rifling through her things, helping herself to accessories or school supplies or, more often, to Carley’s secret chocolate stash. No matter where she hides it, Emma usually manages to sniff it out.
Not today, though. It’s a pretty good bet Emma’s not going to go browsing on Carley’s
“I have to go do homework.” Carley is on the move, brushing past Jen, heading for the stairs.
“On a Friday afternoon?”
“Math test Monday.”
“Wait, Car, guess what? I made some peanut butter cook—”
“No, thanks.”
“But—”
“I’m not hungry.” Carley bounds up the steps. Seconds later, her bedroom door closes—not gently, but not hard, either.
Jen finds herself wishing her daughter would just slam the damned door. Good old-fashioned healthy adolescent anger—she’d welcome that any day over this . . . this preternatural calm.
Door slamming isn’t Carley’s style, though. She isn’t the household hothead by any stretch. That honor belongs to Emma—or perhaps to Jen herself.
Aside from her looks, Carley takes after Thad’s side of the family.
“In other words, she’s quiet and reasonable and sane,” Thad used to tease Jen whenever she mentioned the similarities between him and their firstborn.
“Hey! Are you accusing me of being loud and unreasonable and insane?”
“Absolutely,” he’d say, or he’d raise an eyebrow at her—just one—and the conversation would invariably end in a few more traded quips and grins.
Around here lately, though, lighthearted moments have become as scarce as . . . as . . .
As songs played on that piano, Jen thinks as she passes it on her way back to the kitchen. Back before the girls’ lessons got lost in the busy household shuffle, Emma complained constantly and could barely bang out a scale. But Carley seemed to have some actual talent.
Maybe she should get back into music, Jen muses, moving on down the hall. Maybe that will help somehow.
Back in the kitchen, she eyes the trays of cookies cooling on the breakfast bar.
Maybe those will help somehow.
Maybe something, somehow, will help.
You can’t just fix everything , Thad’s voice reminds her.
No? Watch me.
She grabs a rubber spatula, slides the edge under a cookie, and starts to move it from the still-hot baking sheet to a waiting plate. She’ll take a couple up to Carley’s room with a glass of milk and see if she wants to talk.
She won’t. But at least she’ll know I’m there for her if she needs me. At least she’ll know she’s not alone. And sooner or later, she’ll—
As she tilts the spatula, the cookie, still too hot, lands on the plate in an accordion heap of crumbly goo.
“Crap!”
Shaking her head, Jen tosses the spatula aside in frustration.
Once again, she was too impulsive. Once again, she forgot to think things through before she acted.
When , Jen asks herself, will you ever learn?
A quick visual inspection assures Carley that her lavender and white bedroom is just as she left it this morning before school: bed neatly made; books, binders, folders, and note cards stacked just so on her desk; closet door and dresser drawers slightly ajar—just slightly, so that it’ll be easier for her to tell whether anything is amiss.
Nothing is.
Good.
Now that Carley has moved on to high school, she has to catch a metro bus that departs half an hour before Emma leaves for Saint Paul’s. That’s a problem in a house without any locks on the interior doors. Sometimes her sister sneaks in after she’s gone and snoops around or borrows something. Usually not clothes, of course—Emma is one of those petite girls who will never be more than a size two, while Carley, already a twelve, is the same size as Mom.
Too bad that doesn’t keep Emma from rifling through her things, helping herself to accessories or school supplies or, more often, to Carley’s secret chocolate stash. No matter where she hides it, Emma usually manages to sniff it out.
Not today, though. It’s a pretty good bet Emma’s not going to go browsing on Carley’s
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