Six

Quinn

Dear Parker,

Do you remember when we were little and you looked out the car window and asked Dad what a cement truck was? You wanted to know why it kept turning.

He gave you some explanation about how it has to turn to keep the cement wet so it’ll be ready to pour, but you still kept asking that same question. It’s like the answer he had wasn’t the one you were looking for.

I sort of feel that way now. I keep asking myself all the same questions about you. Even though I know the answers, I keep asking, hoping the answers will change.

Your sister,

Quinn

Dad and Mom were both accountants, but Mom quit her job right after it all happened. So now she’s home all the time. She says she’s taking time to figure things out. What those things are, she never says.

When I get home, Mom’s bouncing around the kitchen. Joni Mitchell is playing softly, and there’s a pot on every burner of the stove. I hum along to the song. It’s one that Mom and I used to sing together a lot when I was little.

During the time when my Freeze-Ups were the worst, singing helped to get my mind unstuck. My brain doesn’t do that so much anymore, but there’s still something about singing that makes me feel better.

Mom’s wearing a checkered apron, and her hair that’s the same red color as mine falls in a long braid down her back. Parker had the same brown hair as Dad, a dark shade that lightened up in the summer. But Mom and I match. She used to say we had “daybreak hair.” She hasn’t told me that in a while.

“Quinn!” she says. She gives me a tight squeeze. She smells like the entire spice cabinet. Since quitting her job, Mom has gotten really into cooking. Dinner used to be microwaved macaroni and cheese and leftover turkey sandwiches. Now it’s things like coq au vin, which I can’t quite pronounce.

“How was your day?”

“Fine,” I say, and hang my backpack up on the mudroom hook. Before, I would toss my stuff everywhere. But now I feel like I have to do everything right. I keep hoping that if I do everything as perfectly as I can, the universe is going to reward me with a wormhole.

Please, please, please, I whisper to the universe about a million times a day. Watch me be a good daughter. Watch me pay attention in class even though it’s so hard to sit still. Watch me fold my laundry instead of throwing it into my dresser in one big messy clump.

“Lots of homework?”

“Not too bad.”

Cupcake slinks into the room. She rubs against my legs. Purring loudly as usual. Cupcake was Parker’s cat, but she became my cat long before Parker was gone. She became my cat when Parker stopped caring about her and everything else that used to matter to him.