“It has to work,” said Fiona. “We are out of options.”

“Has to and will are two different things,” said Marlin, ever the practical one.

“I need you to believe it will, Marl,” said Fiona. “I can’t propel us forward on this hope all alone.”

“Okay,” said Marlin. She was touched by the faith her sister put into her to carry part of the weight of their decision to go it alone but privately she was thinking, I will say I believe it will work but that’s not the same as believing it any more than has to work and will work are the same.

Fiona was thinking that she could not bear to be parted from her sisters. They each had quirks and qualities that had melded together as if all of them together were one thing. One entity. She always believed she could save the people she loved through the force of her determination. Charlie always had one eye out for danger like the family watchdog. Natasha floated through life like a poet, seeing birds and the slant of light on things, alive in the moment without any thought to what might happen next. Marlin had her feet planted fully, stubbornly on the ground. It was as if they all shared the parts of each other that were missing in themselves. There were good and bad sides to these qualities that they brought to the table but she would not change any of them from what they were. She dearly loved both the good and inconvenient aspects of their natures, and her sisters’ natures had become somehow part of her own so that she did not even know who she was without the other three. She did not want to be apart from them. She feared aloneness for herself but she feared it even more for her sisters. The pain it would bring to her was terrible to contemplate but pain for them was unthinkable.

Miss Webster

BEFORE they set off, Fiona Google-mapped the walk time to school and found it would take them forty-five minutes. She hurried them out the door, figuring if they did arrive a little late it wouldn’t really matter as they might only be registering, not attending classes that day anyway. They’d had lots of experience with new schools around the world and knew that each had its own ways. As they went down the road she worried that the schools would not let her register the four of them but would want a parent with them to sign things but she kept this worry to herself, cheerfully pointing out big old barns and huge trees and other points of interest.

Once at the elementary school, as they made their way through arriving children and found the school office, her hands began unconsciously to knit and unknit themselves. Marlin gave her a sharp jab with her elbow and when Fiona realized the nervous picture she was presenting, she stopped, drew herself up, and entered the school office prepared for battle.