Springtime had come late in Ohio that year, but it’d finally brought back the kind of weather where Vivian wanted all the windows and doors open so she could smell the flowers, feel the warm breezes, and hear the crickets chirping at night. A lovely scent wafted in from the honeysuckle bush just outside the kitchen window, and Vivian found herself lingering over the dishes just to enjoy it.

“You think whatever was wrong with her in February had anything to do with it?” Edward asked from the table.

“Mmm.” Vivian shrugged but kept her eyes on the backyard.

Vera hadn’t really been sick in February, as far as she knew, but if it made more sense to Edward that she had been, and that Vivian had been a good sister and gone to see her in Akron, all the better.

“She seem sick at the party?”

“No.” Vivian suppressed a grimace remembering Grandma Kurtz’s birthday party, and Vera’s rude and awful behavior. “Healthy as ever.”

Vivian had been stunned speechless when her sister Violet telephoned to tell her about Vera’s stroke.

“She’s in the hospital right now, but should be able to go home with Wally in a few days,” Violet had said over the line, before taking a long drag on her cigarette.

Violet, too, had quit smoking to have James and Emily, like Vivian had with Charlotte, but had started up again when James got polio. He was fine now, but Violet hadn’t completely recovered. Her smoking was here and there when things were good. After learning of their eldest sister’s stroke, she was back to a pack a day.

“Unh,” was all that had come out of Vivian’s mouth.

“The doctor says she can’t talk, but she understands everything. And she can’t move the whole left side of her body. Wally’s hiring a nurse to help her when he’s at work.”

Vivian had pulled the telephone cord to its limit and was almost to the top of the stairs. She wanted to lie down on her bed, but instead slumped into a sitting position on the tenth stair.

“Viv? Did you hear me? Are you there?”

She steered the Buick over to the curb in front of Violet’s house and honked the horn. Violet still couldn’t drive, and said she had no intention of learning. Why would she? Robert drove her everywhere. Vivian had rolled her eyes. It was almost as if Violet enjoyed being a little bit helpless now and then. That wouldn’t have annoyed Vivian so much if the helplessness came along with a considerate punctuality. Violet was always late.

Vivian turned the rearview mirror toward her and patted the skin under her eyes. The makeup didn’t quite cover the shadows, evidence of the sleepless nights she’d endured since hearing about her sister’s stroke. Vera was only forty-four. And Vivian had been struggling with flashes of Good! that squashed the charitable pity she should’ve been feeling one hundred percent of the time. She’d held on to much of that anger toward Vera, and also thought that Vera’s stroke was probably her just desserts for being such a horrible sister all these years.