I took off my uniform and pulled on jeans, a T-shirt, and sneakers. My big toes were pushing through the canvas. I’d already saved up enough babysitting money to get a new pair. Mrs. Boucher paid me ten dollars a night basically to watch television, which for me was a treat because we didn’t have one at home. I didn’t want to leave with Ellen still out on the road, but I couldn’t call Mrs. Boucher this late to cancel. I looked out the window into the darkness, holding my hands on either side of my face to block out the light from the room. Someone had turned on the outdoor lamps, probably Marie. I could see the large quartz rocks at the end of our driveway, the long grass, and the empty street.

Marie came into the room and flopped on her own bed, across from the trundle beds where Ellen and I slept. “Don’t leave your stuff on mine.” She threw my kilt back at me. “You can stop looking; she won’t be back for hours. It could be ten or eleven before she gets here.”

“She shouldn’t have mentioned Dad.”

“Why not?” Marie asked. “Why should we go around walking on eggshells all the time? We’re not allowed to talk about anything, so when someone does, it’s a catastrophe.” Marie had taken off her kilt and school blouse. She tugged a black T-shirt with a picture of burning cars across the front over her head. “And once again, she just shuts herself in her room.” She shoved her heel down into a black boot. She was right, Mom would stay in there for the night. “Anyway, it wasn’t mentioning Dad that upset her so much.” Marie sat back down on the bed and started putting on thick black eyeliner. “It was the fat-boyfriend comment.”

After Dad died, we had gone to family counseling twice. On our first visit, we each met individually with the counselor, Gwen. I told Gwen about my mother’s boyfriend, Bill, how she kept him a secret from all of us except Beatrice, that the rest of us had never met him even though he’d been around for years. That it was obvious he was Beatrice’s father, and how I was angry with my mom all the time. I never asked any of the others what they talked about.