“Your grandma wasn’t all bad. She made the best blackberry cobbler I have ever eaten.” Ginger sighs and bites into an animal cracker. “I think,” she says, pausing to chew, “she just didn’t know what to do with us. She expected we’d stay close, get jobs like hers working at the Burlington Coat Factory. When I got a scholarship, she said college was ‘above my station,’ and if I went, I shouldn’t come back to rub their noses in it.” She shakes her head. “I tried once, you know, to go see them my senior year. Their car was parked out back, and I saw the curtains move when I knocked. But they never answered the door.”

“That’s terrible.”

She rubs the back of her neck, then rolls down the top of the package of animal crackers in tiny, perfect folds.

“That’s just them.”

That doesn’t sound like much of an excuse to me. I think about Mom not even calling and thump the dryer with my heel.

“You know, your grandpa was on disability the whole time we were growing up. He injured his back on a construction job. When they found out your mom was pregnant, they lost it. If I was above my station, well, Jill had sunk too far below. They said they couldn’t possibly take on another mouth to feed and she’d have to get a job with your grandma if she wanted the two of you to stay. So Jill left.”

Wait. What? Mom always told me she’d been kicked out. If what Ginger just said is true, then this means she had a choice. She chose to leave. She chose to keep us separate and not let me meet my grandparents, however awful they might be. Or Ginger. All those places. All those schools I never got to finish. She always chose to leave. I bang my heels against the dryer, this time hard enough to sting. But it’s not hard enough to make the hurt go away.

“You don’t have to do that, you know?” Ginger says, and I jump. I forgot she was there.

“Do what?”

“Your laundry. Just leave it in the basket, and I can take care of it.”

“It’s okay. I like to do it.”

“All right, then.” Ginger smiles and hops down. “I’m off to eat some cold beef and broccoli.”