“I know how much you love her, but I know you love Olivia and Tyler, too.”
Brenda sighed. “When I was over there last night I saw stuff in her bathroom.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Needles.”
Shit. Shit shit shit. Laurel had been through rehab three times already, and had been clean for almost six months.
“It’s that boyfriend,” Brenda said. “That Jason. Maybe it’s his stuff. He’s a bad influence, I’ve been telling Laurel that he is. Maybe they’re his needles.”
“Do you think she’s using?”
Silence.
“Do you think the kids are safe?”
Silence, and then another sigh. “Maybe I could just take them for a while. I’ve got an empty room, with Dante away. Maybe it’s just a slip, and I can call her therapist and some of her friends, and she can get it together and I’ll watch the babies.”
While we worked out a plan for Laurel and Olivia and Marcus, Moochie traipsed down the stairs, with Delaney behind her, both of them probably drawn by the scent of toast. Upstairs, I heard the shower go on. Ever since she’d turned ten, Adele, who’d always been fastidiously neat, had gotten even more neurotic about possibly smelling bad and was bathing twice a day.
“Can I have bacon?” Delaney wore a long-sleeved white shirt with a pink star in the center and capri-length polka-dotted pink leggings, an ensemble that would be joined by slip-on sneakers covered in multicolored sparkly sequins. Understated was not a word you’d apply to my little one’s sense of style.
I pointed at the refrigerator, then at the cupboard. Delaney took the bacon out of the fridge, then rummaged for the frying pan. When I pointed to the table she frowned and pointed upstairs, letting me know that it was Adele’s turn to set, but when I pointed again, she gave a noisy, Jay-influenced sigh and started pulling out place mats and napkins. I was just hanging up and starting to boil a pot of water for poached eggs when Adele came downstairs in her bathrobe with an angry expression and her hair full of suds.
“The showerhead fell off,” she said, and pulled it out of her pocket to show me.
“Oh, shit.”
“Language!” said Delaney, through a mouthful of toast.
“Okay, you go rinse off in my shower, and then I’ve got a quick call to make after breakfast, so I need both of you to walk the dog and be ready to go by ten. There’s a present for Maria Cristina in the closet, Delaney. You just need to wrap it. Adele, help your sister.”
“Don’t I always?” grumbled Adele, who was turning the corner from the charming path of girlhood to the freeway of adolescence. She gave me a withering look, dropped the showerhead on the counter, and stalked back up the stairs.
Okay, I thought, as I scrolled through my phone, looking for the number for Laurel’s therapist. I could take Adele to her lesson, run to the home-goods store, buy another showerhead and maybe even get someone to explain to me how to install it, before picking up Adele and taking Delaney to her party. And if that didn’t work I’d call a plumber. “Thirty minutes!” I called. The water boiled, the coffee dripped, the bacon spat in the pan, and the house was warm, full of good smells and comfortable couches and music and two relatively happy girls. All will be well, I told myself, and dashed upstairs to take a shower of my own.
•••
Two hours later, after dropping off a sulky Adele, appeasing Delaney with a package of Jolly Ranchers, and getting lost twice, I found a parking spot at Wallen Home Goods and carried the amputated showerhead inside. I peered at the signs, thinking that I’d need to get my eyes checked soon, and led Delaney through paint and toward plumbing. “Ooh!” she said, spying the strips of paint chips in their revolving displays. “Can I take some?” she asked as she spun one of the racks to the pinks and purples.
“Just a few. We have to hurry.” I watched as she considered each strip, sounding out the names of the colors. “Come on, cookie,” I said, and she sighed, filling her hands and following me deeper into the store. In the plumbing section I cornered a tall, pimply kid in a Wallen shirt.
“Excuse me,” I said, pulling the showerhead out of my purse. “This fell off. Do I need a whole new one, or is there a way to put it back on?”
“Let me find someone who knows,” he squawked, and practically ran down the aisle.
Delaney sighed. “This is boring,” she said, staring at the wall of bathroom fixtures.
“Someday I will tell you about the week I spent building houses.”
She eyed me with a mixture of skepticism and respect. “You built houses?”