“It’s the brother thing,” she said. “In this family, they’re held to a completely different standard than the sisters.”

“You know,” I said, “now that you mention it, I’ve barely heard from Michael since he and Phoebe started getting along again.”

“Exactly. That’s how it works. When the boys’ lives are falling apart, the girls hover all over them. Let them whimper on our shoulders. Make sure they get haircuts and have birthday cakes and keep the drunk-dialing to a bare minimum. By the time the girls need something, they’ve checked out again.”

I rubbed Oreo’s belly while I let this sink in. When Oreo started attacking my hand with his new razor-sharp little teeth, I substituted a stuffed mouse so he wouldn’t get the idea that chomping on hands was okay.

“I hope,” Carol was saying, “you at least got the scoop from Johnny about what happened between him and Kim. And you also found out how that ridiculous hippie talk got started. He’s not old enough to relive his hippie days. He was barely out of diapers back then.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t wait around for the whole story. Polly came back from wherever she’d been, and the two of them started talking. I saw my chance, so I slipped away to call you.”

“Okay, then,” my big sister said. “Here’s the plan. We call Billy Jr. and Michael and lay it on thick about how much Johnny needs them. We guilt-trip them into doing the first line of support, when Johnny’s in full wallow mode. Then we step in later when he’s ready to listen to some kick-butt sisterly advice. It’ll save us a lot of time and aggravation that way.”

“Sounds good.” I leaned back against the couch to get more comfortable. Sunshine climbed up my arm, pounced on a clump of my hair, started chewing on it. I grabbed a stuffed frog and redirected him.

“Ooh, I know,” I said. “We can get them to move Johnny out to the trailer while they’re listening to him wallow and then—”

“Wait. You’re putting Johnny in the trailer?” She made it sound worse than putting Baby in the corner in Dirty Dancing.

“Joe starts work on the next phase of the renovation Monday.” I rolled a ping pong ball across the floor for Squiggy and Catsby to chase. “John and I are sleeping in the cat room, so don’t you dare try to make me feel guilty.”

“Dad’s friend’s teeny-tiny canned ham trailer?” Carol said, like there might be more than one trailer in our backyard.

“Yeah,” I said. “Unless you’d rather have Johnny stay at your house?”

“The trailer’s great. I mean, Dad probably even left some beer out there.”

John looked up from playing fetch with Horatio on the side lawn.

“Sorry I called you an umlaut,” I said.