Part One: The Towel
It was the morning after I’d asked my sister — clearly, and not for the first time — to stop coming downstairs in nothing but a towel. She padded into the kitchen anyway, damp hair dripping onto the tile, and asked my husband to grab the coffee filters for her.
Andrew glanced up at the cabinet.
Then at Kayla.
Then he picked up his mug and left without a word.
Kayla watched the doorway where he’d disappeared.
“What’s his problem?”
I reached past her and closed the cabinet she’d left hanging open.
“You are.”
She laughed.
And that laugh — light, careless, amused — was the thing that finally broke something in me.
Two weeks earlier, she’d shown up on our porch with two suitcases, $287 in her checking account, and yesterday’s mascara streaked beneath both eyes. Her boyfriend of six years had told her to pack up and leave.
I didn’t ask whether she could afford a hotel. I didn’t suggest she try her friends first. I just took one suitcase, Andrew took the other, and I said the words any sister would say.
“Stay as long as you need. Until you’re back on your feet.”
Andrew had nodded before I’d even finished.
That first week, she was easy to have around. Quiet. Grateful. A little hollowed out, the way people are when the floor has just dropped out from under them.
Then came the towel.
