Page 75 of Fade into You

“Ow-eyed,” they keep repeating. “Ow-eyed, Merd.”

“No, not right now,” I tell them, and they get really whiny.

“Go ow-eyed, Merd. Now!”

“What do they want?” Jessa asks.

“They want to go outside,” I translate for her. “Outside, Merd… Bird.”

“Aww, Merd,” Jessa coos. “Well, why can’t they go outside?”

“Oh, um…” I have to think about it for a second. Everybody’s always saying no around here. There’s always something else that needs to be done, or no one has the energy or time orpatience for yeses. I feel bad for the twins when Mom and Daniel seem to just not have enough to go around. “I was hoping they’d go down for a nap soon so we could go to my room. Wink, wink. But I guess we can take them outside, if you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind. You don’t have to keep asking me that,Merd,” she says with a wicked grin as she stands up.

In our janky backyard, Jessa immediately starts romping around with Aimee and Ava. Kicking at the leaves and playing with the random toys they hand her, being enthusiastic about the things they say even though I know she can’t understand 90 percent of it. I start to rake up some of the leaves that are blanketing the entire yard. “Oh!” Suddenly a cascade of leaves is pouring over me like a waterfall. When I turn around, Jessa is finishing dumping a summer sand bucket full of leaves over my head.

The girls are laughing—belly laughing—hysterically squealing, “Uh-den, uh-den!”

“Again?” Jessa asks them. I guess she’s catching on to their toddler dialect. “Should we do it again?”

They scream in response, bouncing up and down. This time she bends over and grabs a whole armful of leaves and tosses them up into the air over me. The girls try to copy her, and manage to throw their own tiny handfuls at me.

“Why are you all ganging up onme?” I ask, pretending to be offended. “I think we should get Jessa!”

Soon, we’re all running around the yard, chasing each other with bundles of leaves. Jessa is the one to initiate jumping into the big pile I raked up. I jump in next to her, and then the twins are shrieking and dive-bombing us over and over, until we’re alljust lying there in the leaves, side by side, looking up at the sky. The girls start pointing at clouds and saying what the shapes look like.

Unicorn. Dinosaur. Flower. Dog. Elephant.All in their own form of garbled English.

I lose track of what they’re saying because Jessa reaches for my hand in the leaves. I turn my head to look at her and she’s got such a bright, gorgeous smile on her face. I wish we could stay like this forever.

“I was just thinking,” she begins. “We should go to Boston—take a road trip. Go find your dad’s restaurant, you know?”

“What, just show up? Uninvited? Unexpected?”

She shrugs. “Yeah.”

“I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?”

“Because. What if he doesn’t even want to see me?”

She frowns like she hasn’t considered this. “I don’t think that would happen.”

I look up at the clouds and try to imagine what that might feel like, this hypothetical reunion I’ve been dreaming about for years. It takes me a minute to realize that it’s gotten quiet. I sit up quickly, thinking somehow I let the girls slip away, but they’re both just lying there, asleep in the disheveled pile of leaves. Jessa sits up too, and gently plucks a few leaves out of my hair.

“Well, they’re finally napping,” she says.

She helps me carry them into the house and tuck them into their cribs. Quietly, I bring the baby monitor with us and we creep up the stairs to my room. I hold my bedroom door openfor her and feel my insides clenching as she walks in. Her room is epic. Mine is pathetic. Her house is big and orderly and clean. Mine is, well, not.

“Ha,” she breathes. “Let me guess which side is yours.”

“It’s bad, I know.” I try to preempt whatever she must be thinking.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, it’s nothing compared to yours.”