“When did you last hear from her?”

“Day before yesterday. She was in Las Vegas.” She adjusted the jacket to measure the front.

“Did she win?”

Perhaps just one more row, then she would bind off. “Hmm? Oh, I don’t know; she didn’t say anything about gambling.”

“Is she the sort to gamble?”

“A year ago I would have said yes, definitely. But I’m not so sure now.” Margot tucked the tape measure back into the basket and sat down to resume knitting.

Shelly made a concerned face and said, “Oh, Margot; is she coming because she’s broke?” Shelly had a cousin who mooched.

Margot considered that. “No, I think she’s at loose ends right now, and just doesn’t know what she wants to do next.”

Betsy was Margot’s only sibling, her elder by two years. They had been close as children, despite having very different personalities. Margot had been the placid and obedient one; Betsy had been impulsive and adventurous. At eighteen, Betsy had run away to join the navy. A year later she married a sailor in one of those hasty justice-of-the-peace ceremonies, phoning home with the news only afterward. This completed the breach between Betsy and her parents, which was some years healing.

Margot had lived at home until she finished college, then married the boy she’d dated since junior high. The sisters had stayed in touch over the years, but had not seen much of one another. Betsy’s first marriage hadn’t lasted long. She had moved around a lot, and then wrote of belated plans to get a degree. The Christmas after that she announced her marriage to a college professor. Letters were fewer after that, and less exciting. Margot had thought Betsy settled at last.

Then, just a few weeks ago, Betsy had written a long letter. Her college-professor husband had fallen in love with one of his students and was divorcing Betsy. Apparently there had been a pattern of affairs with students, so Betsy was letting him go. The tone of this letter was very unlike Betsy’s normal cheery exuberance. She sounded sad and tired. Margot, worried, wrote back at once and, after an exchange of letters, invited her sister to come for an extended visit. Betsy’s reply: Keep a light on for me, I’ll be there in a week or ten days. That had been just over a week earlier.

“... funny that,” Shelly was saying.

“Funny what?”

Shelly’s voice thinned as she strained to put a clear suction cup with a hook on it way up near the top of the window. “It’s usually the oldest child who’s conservative, more grown-up, the one who helps parent the younger ones.”

“You think so? But there was just the two of us, and I’m only twenty-seven months younger. ...” Her needles slowed as she thought that over. Betsy had been the voice of enthusiasm, the “what if” and “wouldn’t it be fun to” child; Margot had been the cautionary, worried “we could get hurt” or “Mama will be mad” child. Each had brought some balance to the tendencies of the other; perhaps that’s why they had been so happy together growing up. Perhaps they could recapture some of that balance.