I wondered if the girls would feel more comfortable with me if I had visited more since their move to Seabank. Maybe if I had, I would have sensed a problem with Wendy, too, something in her life she needed to talk about. Unfortunately, the only thing I could do for my sister now was buy ice cream for her daughters.

“You don’t have to have pumpkin, Noelle.” I pointed at the sign. “They have more than a dozen flavors you can choose from. I just read them to you. Did you hear anything you might like?”

“She eats vanilla,” Holly said.

Holly was a head taller than her sister, with long brown hair and eyes as dark as my own, along with her father’s widow’s peak. I had never seen a winning smile on my niece’s face. Holly was perpetually solemn, with lips that sagged between a pout and a grimace. Apparently that had never stopped Wendy from buying her expensive girly clothing. Holly’s outfit matched Noelle’s, only in yellow.

“Vanilla, then,” I said, sorry that I’d thought bringing them to Creamworks was a good way to get to know them. “How about you?”

She shrugged. “I don’t care.”

“Do you like peanut butter?”

“No.”

“Lemonade?”

“No.”

“Vanilla?”

She shrugged again. I ordered vanilla cones for both girls, along with my more exotic choice.

When the cones arrived, Noelle carefully wrapped two napkins around hers. Holly, more daring, wrapped one. I grabbed a napkin for mine, just in case, and led them outside to an iron bistro table, packed tightly among half a dozen like it.

“Vanilla doesn’t stain,” Noelle said before she began to rotate the cone and carefully lick away any drip that might make it past the bundled napkins.

Wendy’s voice emerging from a six-year-old was disquieting. I wondered if Noelle was parroting a dictate, thus the root of the vanilla fetish. Since I wasn’t their mother, I couldn’t criticize my sister. For all I knew, the ice cream mandate had come about after an entire wardrobe of little girl clothes had been ruined by Persimmon Cinnamon and Banana Manna stains.

“This is so good.” I held up my cone in demonstration. “How’s yours?”

Noelle was too busy battling drips to answer. Holly shrugged again.

I tried a different topic. “So how’s school, Holly? Do you like your teacher?”

I was treated to shrug number three. I tried a question she had to answer with actual words. “What’s your teacher’s name?”

This precipitated a world-weary sigh. “Mrs. English.”

“How about you, Noelle? What’s your teacher’s name?”

“Her name is Mrs. English, too,” Holly said.

“How unlikely is that?” I smiled. “Are they sisters?” I winced as I realized I’d asked another shruggable question and immediately got my comeuppance. “You don’t know?” I winced again because, let’s face it, I wasn’t catching on very quickly.

I tried once more, thinking carefully first. “So two Mrs. Englishes. Noelle, what color hair does your Mrs. English have?” I held up a finger as Holly began to answer. “This question is for Noelle.”