“Well, you would know if you answered your phone, wouldn’t you?” she shoots back, and I wonder if I should just go ahead and dump the entire bottle of Zen into my diffuser since the eight drops aren’t working.

This is gonna be fun.

Not.

“I told you I was sorry and I know I messed up. It was a disaster and you and Daisy went out of your way to make it amazing. I felt terrible. I needed time to process before I could call you.”

I think this will soften her up a little bit, but it doesn’t. Not at all. In fact, it might make it worse.

“Time to process? Are you kidding me?” She twists around and her long braids fan across the room, narrowly missing the framed picture of me and Gran on my console table by the door. “We don’t process it alone, we do it together.” She holds up her hands and begins ticking them away. “The twins, the grand surprise that turned out to be Finn, Alice, the Book Nook? We got through all that shit together.”

Of course, she’s not wrong about any of this.

When she found out she was pregnant with the twins, she called me from inside the ultrasound room, and she did it before she called Brandon. I’m still not sure if she was laughing or crying as she told me the news. She was definitely crying when she found out she was pregnant with Finn the week before Brandon was scheduled to get snipped. It’s still kind of a blur, but I vaguely remember dialing her number from the hospital—my phone had no service—to tell her Gran had died. And then I called her again from inside the lawyer’s office when I was told I was the new owner of the Book Nook.

“I know. You’re right, it’s just . . .” I trail off, not knowing what else to tell her, since I’m not sure even I understand my decision, before I let it all loose. “Listen, I’m a fucking mess, okay? I’m sorry I didn’t call you. I don’t know why I didn’t. I cried at dinner with Jasper. Like, real, fat, ugly tears. Not cute, dainty ones you dab away with the corner of a tissue. He asked me to tell him about my old life and instead of holding on to a modicum of self-respect, I launched into it all. Dad, Gran, my photography, I mentioned it all.”

“You . . . you told him about your dad and photography? And you cried?” All the anger in her face has fled and instead she looks as horrified as I feel. She knows I’m not a pretty crier. I’m the poor version of Kim Kardashian, ugly crier.