Never again.

It was fake at that moment, her sadness. But when I was done with her, it wouldn’t be.

LILY

“CHECK THE PANTRY,” LILY said, grabbing the flower from the table.

“We already did, Mrs. Harrison,” Ruth chimed in. Her cheeks were redder than usual. In contrast, her hair looked almost golden in the early-evening light.

“Can we go to the store?”

“I don’t know,” Silas said, and Lily could practically see his brain push her and Gavin and everything else to its edges. Silas had always been excellent at compartmentalizing.

“Please, Dad? Sean says it’s okay with him, and Ruth has never had mac and cheese.” Mickey held her friend by the shoulders and widened her eyes like she did when that guy in Venice Beach let her hold his parrot for five dollars.

Silas put his hand on his heart and fell backward as if shot.

“What?” he exclaimed loudly, a whole different kind of loud from moments before.

“Only the kind from the freezer,” Ruth said as both girls burst out laughing.

“Well, we need to remedy that right away. That is unacceptable in the Harrison house.”

His recovery was magnificent. Like everyone else around him, Lily could only watch.

“Dad makes the best mac and cheese; you’re going to die,” Mickey said to Ruth, and Ruth clapped her hands. “And then he adds in kielbasa—O.M.G.” She said it just like that, letters instead of words.

“Let’s get a move on!”

Mickey beamed and wrapped both her arms around his waist.

“Thank you, Daddy.”

It hurt Lily to watch Silas kiss the top of their daughter’s head, so instead, she turned to Ruth.

Lily had suspected Ruth was jealous of Mickey from the beginning. Sure, Ruth was older and more sophisticated, with all of the charms that come from or create said sophistication. But Lily knew that for most girls—the smart ones, at least—charm was a defense, which rose to the surface less like cream and more like dorsal fins. And Ruth was a smart girl.

Standing in that kitchen, Sarah’s poppy crushed in her fist, Lily could see Ruth more clearly than she had that whole summer. And she found herself almost breathless with how familiar she was. Not because she looked like Sarah, which Lily had always assumed was Ruth’s most disarming feature. But because in that moment, as they both stood on the outside watching Silas and Mickey laugh in their own easy world, she looked like Lily.