My dad does his breathing thing again.

I’m sure he’s going to give me some lecture about how money isn’t everything, and I think of all the arguments I could give about how it sure doesn’t hurt.

But instead, he sighs and says, “Yeah, that would be nice.”

I lean into him, and he puts his arm around me.

“I love you, kiddo,” he says. “And I’m really proud of you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” I say.

“You’ve been a wonderful big sister this summer. And you’ve taken on a big responsibility with all those animals. You don’t complain when your mom and I can’t buy you things. You’re just . . . you’re a good kid, Rach. And you’re teaching Ivy to be a good kid, too.”

I think about all my inner griping about my bathing suit and hand-me-downs. Maybe on the outside I seem good, but I’m not always so great on the inside.

We sit like that for a while, watching Micah and Ivy play Clueless and float on their backs. They look like they’re having a great time, but I don’t really feel like joining them. Instead, I slather some sunblock on and lean back on my towel and let the sun warm my skin. I listen to the sounds of people playing in the water, and pieces of conversation of the people on towels nearby, and my dad’s careful breathing, as if he’s not just trying to come up with the right thing to say, but he’s trying to figure out what on earth will happen to us. Where we’ll go. And how we’ll get by.

He breathes and breathes like that for a long time, but if he comes up with a solution, he doesn’t share it out loud.

Chapter Twenty-Four

We spend the whole week and the weekend slowly packing things up. When I’m not doing chores at the Townsends’, I’m home sorting through old clothes and toys or reading to Rainbow and Ivy. My mom gets a bunch of boxes from the local liquor store and tells Ivy and me that we have to be selective with our stuff and decide what we really want to keep. If there’s something we haven’t worn or played with for over a year, it goes in the Yard Sale box. If there’s a special toy that we really want to keep even though we don’t play with it, it goes in the For Discussion box. We show those things to her at the end of each day and then talk about why we want to keep them.